Tales from Pivot Point
by ElenaRoan
Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.
1. Chapter 1

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **Chapter 1: New Beginnings**

[Roughly lines up with Chapter 38 of Pivot Point]

Victor wasn't sure what was worse, miraculously surviving that "bomb" blast having landed him with the almost joking nickname of 'Spooky' or being assigned to an interagency task force simply because there was something weird in something that had happened.

Hopefully this ATF team he'd been assigned to work with wasn't going to be too difficult. One of them was former FBI, though what that meant with the stories he'd heard about him. Not that his own reputation was all that good now having lost not just his partner but also his boss to one horrible night.

He showed his id at the front desk and the security guard notified someone in Team seven that their visitor had arrived. Some of the other alphabet agencies had flat out refused to send agents because of the weirdness surrounding the situation so for now it was just the FBI and ATF and the FBI hadn't bothered sending even a full squad, opting for someone who'd lost his partner, boss, and had his reputation blown to hell. That he was grateful to still be alive and know stuff about the world that he never would have believed possible before that horrid night didn't stop him mourning the loss.

At least the ATF wasn't taking it flippantly, Team Seven was one of the top performers country wide and, reputation of the former FBI member aside, had a reputation of being able to handle anything thrown at them. They were the favourite for setting on weird crap apparently because once they were done the weird crap was gone.

"Agent Henriksen?"

The strong voice captured his attention and he turned to regard the tall blond dressed all in black. A smile threatened to escape as he remembered the other part of their reputation; few of them bothered with dressing like normal federal agents. It was an idiosyncrasy that was overlooked given their phenomenal success rate.

"That's me." Victor replied, wondering what the other agent made of him. Probably unimpressed.

"Chris Larabee, welcome to the task force on weird crap." The blond returned, offering his hand.

"You don't seem to mind being set on it." Victor replied, shaking the offered hand.

Chris shrugged, "we seem to have a knack for untangling the weird and figuring out what's actually real."

Victor wondered what the other agent would make of the demon siege he'd lived through. Not that he was going to ask, he preferred not being in a psych ward after all.

"Hope you don't mind being saddled with me then." Henriksen replied.

Larabee finished signing him in and waved him through the speedstyles, "how do you mean?"

"I don't exactly have the greatest reputation anymore." Victor returned with a surprising lack of bitterness, "lost my partner, my boss, most of a police station, and if that wasn't bad enough also got the two fugitives I'd been after for over a year blown up while they were in my custody."

"Yeah, well, we're not exactly fans of the FBI rumour mill. I read the report on that blast, you're damn lucky to have got out alive at all. The investigators still have squat on what could have caused it, there's no arguing with it having happened though."

"A miracle is what I would have called it." Victor replied softly as he followed the ATF agent into the lift.

"We try not to rely on divine intervention in Team seven." Chris replied with a chuckle.

Victor managed a half-hearted chuckle as the lift doors opened and Chris led him out. A short while later he was led through the office area for the team into their conference area.

The other six members of the team looked at him warily.

"Everyone, this is FBI Agent Victor Henriksen. He's not exactly in the good books of the powers that be over there, hence being assigned to a task force they think is going nowhere fast, so let's make him welcome." Chris introduced him then went around the table quickly, "Vin Tanner, Buck Wilmington, JD Dunne, Ezra Standish, Josiah Sanchez, and Nathan Jackson."

There were various murmurs along the lines of 'hello' from the various members, though it didn't look like he'd be welcomed with open arms anytime soon. He couldn't really blame them. Larabee had mentioned they weren't very fond of the FBI rumour mill and that he was fodder for it also was probably the only reason he hadn't been greeted with open hostility. Even before he'd fallen victim to the rumour mill he'd declined to take it on face value, preferring to see what the Agents actually did for himself and applying logic to any accusations. So while he knew what the rumour mill spouted about Standish the very fact that he was completely accepted by this team and their phenomenal success spoke to it being as much horse hockey as what was being currently spouted about him, though it would be far, far worse if they knew the truth about what had happened. He'd have been sent for a psych evaluation at best or fired and committed to a psych ward at worst if they did.

He just gave them all a hesitant smile as a hello and sank into the chair Larabee waved him to with relief. Larabee himself moved around to the head of the table.

"So what do we have?" Larabee asked.

"Got a few visuals out of street and surveillance cams." JD piped up, he was the youngest and looked like he wasn't old enough to drink let alone be a full blown ATF Agent. The rumours said he could make computers dance in a row if he wanted to and so far Victor hadn't seen anything to discount that. JD did a bit of fiddling on the laptop he had with him and the projector whirred to life, displaying several pieces of camera footage already synched up. None of the angles were great but the two who'd ended up dead could be seen clearly.

"This is right before the confrontation." JD continued, "but the odd thing is those two were waiting there most of the night."

"Ambush?" Vin asked.

"Maybe surveillance." Buck put in.

"Or both." Josiah rumbled.

Victor would have put his money on Josiah's idea if he'd been a gambling man. It also made him wonder at the attitude of the world that a teenager out and about in the early hours of Halloween hadn't raised any concerns.

"Okay, let's see the footage." Larabee directed and a single tap from JD started it playing.

When the two men came into view on the footage it was all Victor could do not to gasp. The walk, the height difference, and the way they fit together. He knew them, was probably the only one left alive who could possibly identify them from that. They'd done a great job of keeping their faces hidden without it looking like they were. Then some sort of beam lanced out from the man who'd ended up dead at the taller of the two targets and he did gasp. Unbelievably he only staggered slightly instead of going down and the two pulled out guns and fired simultaneously. The two attempted murderers went down like sacks of potatoes and their intended victims turned and left. A short while later a black car appeared briefly in the corner of one of the shots, such a small part of it that if Victor hadn't been familiar with the car itself he wouldn't have placed it.

"Holy crap." He breathed, forgetting he was in the middle of possibly hostile agents from another department, "what the hell was that? And how did someone walk away from that?"

A rumbling laugh from Josiah made him remember where he was and he blushed.

"That's a good couple of questions." Larabee agreed, "only one problem. There were no weapons recovered from the scene. JD, any luck on the victims?"

"Tried but no luck, there just weren't any usable angles to get identifying pictures of them."

"Nathan, what did ballistics have to say?"

JD obligingly pulled up a picture of the incredibly mangled bullets that had been pulled from the two would be murderers.

"The bullets were completely mangled, which is odd because neither of them were wearing armour that could have done that. They might be able to reconstruct them enough to get some sort of match, nothing that could be taken to court but it might identify who the intended victims were and let us ask them what they know about those two."

Victor frowned to himself but didn't speak up, he was an intruder here after all.

"Henriksen?" Larabee prompted.

"Uh…was just wondering what the chance that that sort of reconstruction would actually lead to the victims rather than some random person?"

"Good point. Nathan?"

"No better than 50-50."

"Let's shelve that for now. We'll have time for goose chases later if nothing pans out." Larabee decided, "Josiah, anything on the other pieces of evidence that were collected?"

JD again pulled up another few pictures, one of which was evidence bags containing…bags. Another was one of those bags taken apart; a coin, some kind of sprig of a plant, and what looked like a charred stick.

"Based on this, I'd say their…uh…religious practices are a little odd to say the least."

"How so?"

"That coin? Still waiting on the verdict of the assessors but it looks like a genuine Celtic coin, 600 years old. The plant, as far as we can tell, is Gold Thread, which has the local botanists in a tizzy since it has been thought extinct for 200 years. The last item is the most disturbing though, it's a charred metacarpal bone from an infant."

"Where exactly would a teenager and a school teacher even get their hands on that sort of stuff?" Vin asked.

"JD is digging through their history to see if that question can be answered." Josiah replied, "both had access to a kiln; the teenager was a student of the teacher. There were more infant bones found in the teacher's desk, there's a search running to see if we can find a missing infant we can match the bones to."

"Well, sounds like we have plenty to poke into. Let's get to it. JD, could you get Victor set up?"

"Sure."

Victor followed the young agent who led him to a spare desk and got him set up with a login.

"So…do you listen to rumours?" JD asked as he finished.

Victor sighed, "I lost my partner, my boss, most of a police department, and two fugitives in my custody that I'd spent more than a year tracking down to one horrific explosion that only four of us made it out of alive. The stuff the rumours are saying about me doesn't bear repeating and aren't even close to true. Does that give you an idea of how much stock I place in rumours?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

The young agent let him be then and Victor concentrated on the work he'd been sent here to do. He wondered at the very back of his mind when he'd get the chance to give one of the Winchesters a call and check whether they were alright even as he pulled up the footage again and went over it to see if there was anything that stood out. He hoped to heaven that that didn't represent a weapon because he doubted anyone other than the Winchesters would be able to cobble together a defence with barely any warning, and he had no doubt that's what they'd done.

At the end of the day he headed back to the hotel he was in currently with a sense of relief.

Victor sighed as he let himself into the hotel room. Being consigned to the departmental equivalent of Siberia aside it was nice having the expense account footing the bill for his stay in Denver.

Almost out of habit he pulled out the bug sweeper and checked the place, sometimes he wondered if he was becoming as paranoid as the brothers, then he saw stuff like the footage from today and knew there was no such thing as paranoid enough.

He dug out the unidentified phone from its hiding spot and selected the contact identified only as SW. He had the contacts on his regular phone too, but that was only for emergency use. If there was one thing that horrific night had taught him was that it wasn't possible to be too prepared.

It rang a couple of times then was picked up.

"Vic. Everything okay?" Sam answered softly.

"I thought I'd be asking you that question." Henriksen replied, "why are you whispering."

"Dean's asleep." Sam told him, "oh don't tell me…you've landed with the mess from the witches attacking us?"

"Is that what it was? Good job keeping your faces obscured by the way, if I hadn't known you I wouldn't have been able to pick it as you." Henriksen responded, "got put on a joint agency task force because they're worried the blast that hit you represents a new weapon. It doesn't, does it? They didn't find any weapons at the scene and I managed to talk them out of trying to get a match on the mangled bullets they pulled out of them to try and talk to the obvious targets of an attempted murder. I really don't want to know how you managed that one. Already ruled a clear case of self-defence in case you're wondering, they're just worried about what was used on you."

Sam gave a soft chuckle but he obviously wasn't going to elaborate.

"They didn't have any weapons beyond themselves and maybe a knife or two and hex bags." He assured the FBI agent.

"That those little sacks of weird crap?"

"Yep. Shouldn't be dangerous without the witches but I'd suggest burning them. We noted that the spells they used tended to be trap like rather than having to be powered and directed by a witch at the time of deployment as is usually the case, in our experience anyway."

"Yeah, like that'd be easy to achieve. Right now they're sitting down in evidence separated out into their components."

"That should have broken any spell that's been set on them."

"And if it hasn't?"

"Trust me, you'll know. One of those suckers near turned me inside out the previous night."

"Hopefully that doesn't happen. I'm already starting to get called 'Spooky' after escaping that insane 'bomb blast' by the skin of my teeth, I DON'T need anything else contributing to that."

Sam chuckled.

"Did that blast hurt you?" Henriksen continued, "it looked pretty scary, I was half expecting to see you go down the first time I saw the footage."

"Had some protective sigils drawn on my skin that blocked most of it. Got a little burnt but nothing major."

"Glad I don't have to try to explain that one. Try to keep OUT of noteworthy stuff in the near future, okay?"

"Will do. You stay safe."

"You too." Henriksen hung up.

Hiding the phone again he crawled into bed.

The next few days passed uneventfully, digging into the pair's past. The girl had pretty much appeared from nowhere when she arrived as an emancipated minor. The man not that much earlier and they hadn't been able to track down where he'd got his qualifications. If the entire case hadn't been such a hot potato that Homeland Security wanted nothing to do with it that department probably would have pounced on that evidence to point to them possibly being terrorists and taken over the entire thing.


	2. Chapter 2: Strategy

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 2: Strategy**

Josiah watched the FBI agent disappear into the lift on his way home, or at least his temporary home for as long as that agency decided to leave him with them. After a moment he headed into Chris' office, Vin and Ezra following him close behind.

"Well?" Chris asked once the door was shut.

"Flashed Hunter sign at him and he didn't react. He's not a Hunter, not yet at least assuming he did have an encounter." Vin stated.

"Pretty safe bet he did. If that explosion didn't give a pretty good argument for something supernatural occurring there are multiple reports of a mass hallucination or sleepwalking incident a few hours before the explosion. The various statements from the victims only mention the 4 survivors being present at the police station plus two more men who do not correlate to any of the staff of either the police station or the FBI personnel that were present." Josiah put in.

"Hallucination or sleepwalking?" Chris asked with surprise, "demonic possessions and mass exorcism? How many?"

"Somewhere in the vicinity of 30. Apparently, there were no casualties, and I doubt I have to tell you the chances of that." Josiah answered.

"And the two unknown men?"

"Probably a couple of Hunters. There's only one reason they took that many people, the building had been fortified, or the demons would have just blown through there and possessed everyone without a charm. And the only way they managed to exorcise that many demons without casualties is they picked their battleground." Vin replied, "and I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't want to even think about trying to take on that many demons let alone managing to keep many or all of the victims alive."

"Me either." Chris agreed, "any idea who?"

"Probably the two 'felons' that Henriksen makes a point of saying were still in the cells when the place went up, Sam and Dean Winchester." Vin answered.

"The Winchesters?" Chris asked in surprise again.

Josiah nodded, "they're not always the quietest, not without trying though, but they've taken on some real big situations. Remember the demon gate opening about a year and a half ago? They were part of the group who went in to try and stop it. They didn't manage to completely, but the gate was closed a lot sooner than it would have been otherwise. They also took on many of the more powerful demons that escaped."

"Should we try to check on them? Do we have a connection to them?"

"Bobby Singer was also part of the group that went in against the gate opening." Josiah supplied, "so yes, we do have a connection to them just not a direct one."

"So should we check on them?"

"We can at least contact Bobby and find out exactly what happened." Josiah replied.

"Good idea. He's your friend, Josiah, you call him." Chris ordered.

"Will do." Josiah replied.

"Any read on Henriksen himself?"

"He's wary, understandably so." Vin answered.

"He's given no indication of his opinion of the rumours within the FBI, but he's also given no indication that he gives any credence to it either." Ezra stated, "aside from that, I agree that he's quite wary and reluctant to speak. If he's been through a full-on demonic assault that is more than understandable, and we're not likely to get any information out of him in this setting. Without knowing that we're not going to label him crazy or have him committed he's not going to risk speaking to us about what he's been through."

"JD sounded him out on his opinion of the FBI rumour mill when he was setting up his computer." Chris commented, "he replied that what the rumours were saying about him didn't bear mentioning and weren't even close to being true."

"Guess that's similar to the supernatural, easier to believe when it's happened to you." Vin stated.

"I'd suggest letting him get used to us and relax around us. Once he trusts us, then we can take him somewhere other than the office and sound him out on the supernatural, camping at your cabin maybe." Ezra noted.

"Good idea." Chris agreed, "Josiah, what's your read on our current case?"

"I'm almost certain it was a pair of witches, though the jury is still out on what type of witch. There's every chance that they obtained the more obscure ingredients by living during the period they were actually available."

"And their targets?"

"Not completely sure actually. My first instinct was to say a pair of Hunters. However, there are very very few Hunters who'd be able to take on witches let alone actually withstand a blast from one."

"Might they be another pair of witches?" Ezra asked.

Josiah shook his head, "if they were they'd have responded in kind not used guns."

"So we're back to Hunters being the most likely candidates. Any idea how they protected themselves?" Chris asked.

"I believe there are some warding symbols that might work, but taking the time to research them wouldn't typically be a priority for most Hunters. The only one I can think of who might know is Bobby, and I'm pretty sure he'd need to haul a book out to read."

"Well then, I guess you've got two things to ask him."

Josiah nodded.

"Good. Ezra, see if you can come up with an explanation that'll explain that blast and the lack of something to generate it. Preferably something that isn't going to get the two probable Hunters in trouble."

"On it."

"Good. Dismissed, go home and get some actual sleep."


	3. Chapter 3: Bamboozled

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 3: Bamboozled**

[Sometime after Chapter 42 of Pivot Point]

"…hypothosised that a few more seconds of exposure would have caused an effect not unlike the stories of spontaneous human combustion and only the target's quick reflexes with their guns saved them. As a weapon it is quite evidently far too fragile for general deployment, only splinters that are easily mistaken for general refuse remained, and as there have been no further sightings, it can be surmised that the pair were attempting a field test of their prototype."

Henriksen had a hard time keeping a straight face as Ezra finished off his explanation, the visiting FBI brass' eyes had glazed over before the southerner had finished the second paragraph. While he wanted to laugh, he also couldn't help but feel sad, for with this meeting his assignment to the task force was over, and Team Seven and he would go their separate ways.

"Thank you, Agent Standish, for that…concise explanation." AD Travis, the only member of the ATF brass present, stated and Henriksen had to fight to keep his expression neutral again. The older man turned to Chris, "Agent Larabee, what is your opinion on how this taskforce has functioned?"

"Surprisingly well." The blond leader of Team Seven replied, "Agent Henriksen fit in very well with my team. He has a mind and isn't afraid to use it. I would certainly welcome working with him again in the future."

From the expressions on the FBI brass' faces, they hadn't wanted such a favourable report. Henriksen winced internally as he wondered what punishment assignment they were going to give him next. He wasn't about to blame Chris though, it was just the brass' way when they felt you'd failed them.

"Ah, good, then if you don't mind continuing the unconventional arrangement there's an atypical case I believe would benefit from the multifaceted approach the taskforce has displayed." Travis stated, and Henriksen blinked.

"Uh…" one of the FBI brass spoke up.

"That is, of course, as long as Agent Henriksen's expertise is not urgently needed elsewhere." Travis interrupted smoothly, and Henriksen knew without a doubt that the AD knew that his superiors were going to be dumping him in transfer limbo for a while before finding a hellhole to drop him in.

"Ah…no…nothing urgently requires his assistance." The FBI brass who'd been put on the spot confirmed, stumbling over his words slightly as he was utterly outmaneuvered.

"Then it's settled. I'll have the case on your desk within the hour, Chris. Dismissed." Travis declared, and the agents filed out before the FBI brass could figure out what had happened.

"Is it just me…" Henriksen asked quietly once they were a safe distance away, "or did they just get completely and utterly owned?"

Buck gave a laugh and slapped him on the back, "that they did. It's few enough fibbies we actually like, keeping around one of the good ones, especially knowing the brass over there doesn't much like them, is just sensible."

"And Travis agreed." Chris added, "and he certainly wasn't above using Ezra's patented bamboozling to steamroll them. They'll be too busy trying to save face to protest."

"Well I'm not going to complain, sure beats transfer limbo and some Siberian assignment somewhere down the lines." Victor stated, "I wonder what the case is though."

"It's a weird one." Chris replied, "initially looked like a garden variety missing persons. Paediatrician vanished from his home one night, no signs of forced entry, car not taken, no signs of a struggle, none of his appointments for the next day or subsequent days were cancelled."

"Knew his assailant, taken by surprise, kidnapper used their own vehicle, the victim wasn't expecting to be gone." Victor listed and Chris nodded.

"Several months later he's carried into an emergency room, unconscious, across the country. Police were summoned when signs of restraints were spotted. However the rescuer had vanished by that time, and they weren't able to be identified beyond 'tall'. He wasn't able to describe either his captors nor his rescuer or rescuers."

"They got no leads?" Henriksen was surprised, there weren't many who could be that unmemorable especially with a prominent feature like being unusually tall. His thoughts uneasily flicked to one pair he knew who were uncannily good at precisely that.

"Multiple newspaper appeals for them to come forward to be honoured went unanswered. More than a few columnists speculated that they were military or ex-military."

"That makes sense." Vin put in, "there's more than a few active and retired military who see any sort of publicity as an anathema. And they'd be more than capable of pulling off a completely under the radar rescue like that if they'd discovered someone being held."

"Think your contacts might be able to get us some answers, Vin?" Chris asked the former Ranger.

"I can try. No guarantees though. If they're active, there's no way they'd acknowledge an off the books operation like that would have been."

"That'll have to be good enough."

Victor had to grin as they entered the team's area, the AD and team leader had obviously arranged things to keep him around, and he had to admit that it felt good. Even if the case was the departmental equivalent of busy work, a result wasn't expected or even anticipated. Travis made it clear that the consensus was that the task force was believed to be the only place answers might be uncovered even if it was unlikely.

Over the next few days, they scoured through the case files the locals had sent over, the photos, the interviews, the evidence analysis. All of them tried any contacts they had that had even the most remote chance of being connected. Victor was tempted to contact Sam and Dean on the off chance that they'd heard something, but he had no idea how he would explain it if they did have relevant information.

On the third day JD hung back as the rest, and in particular Hendriksen, headed home for the day. He'd been concentrating on the evidence analysis and had just turned his attention to the initial crime scene photos. He emailed on in particular to Chris, who never left until after everyone else did, then went into the blond's office. Chris regularly ensured that the place was bug-free in case odd stuff had to be discussed during work hours.

"What's up?" The team leader asked as JD closed the door behind him, he already had the photo up on his monitor.

"I think we're looking in the wrong place for the rescuer." JD replied, coming around the desk. Chris obligingly allowed him access to the computer. JD quickly zoomed in on a small section of the photo and cleared it up, there was a tiny pile of some sort of powder in the corner.

Chris raised an eyebrow, "did forensics take a sample?"

"If they did they didn't analyse it, can't really blame them. A pile of powder isn't likely to lead to a perp in normal circumstances, they'd have assumed it was from some sort of project the doctor was doing. That sort of thing isn't something a normal kidnapper would inadvertently leave behind."

"True. So demonic possession?"

"That would be my guess without having a sample of the powder to test."

"Explains the lack of a struggle and not taking a car at least. The more powerful ones don't need external forms of transport."

"And why he hasn't spoken of the time he was held captive even though it's unlikely he was out the entire time. He'd be dumped in a psych ward before the end of his first sentence. The demon had to have been an unusual one though, most 'play' with their victims even if they have a mission and leave them with an irreparable criminal history if they don't kill them outright."

"Assuming it is a demon it had him for months and not only didn't kill him it also didn't destroy his life. Powerful and unusual, bad combination."

JD nodded.

"Good work, I'll get Josiah to check with his friend to see if they've heard anything and give him the heads up if not. Keep working though, we don't want to provide the FBI with any reason to snatch Hendriksen back."

JD nodded again before heading out of the office and home. Chris followed a short while later, stopping by Josiah's place to pass on the information before heading to his ranch.


	4. Chapter 4: Explosions and Mystery

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 4: Explosions and Mystery**

[Immediately after Chapter 57 of Pivot Point]

The phone ringing was how the day announced it was about to go to hell in a handbasket.

Chris appeared in the doorway of his office a short while later, "okay, suit up. We've got a suspected bomb with odd elements, the locals asked for help, and Travis is throwing us at it."

"Has the bomb squad cleared the area?" Buck asked even as he, and everyone else, reached for their weapons and badges.

"Yes. The blast is believed to have occurred shortly after dusk, but the effects weren't discovered until this morning."

"Wait a sec…a bomb went off, but the effects weren't noticed for hours?" Vin asked incredulously.

"That's part of the odd elements."

Chris led them out of the office, a few hours later they were standing in the carpark of a one-star motel in a town in the middle of nowhere. None of the rooms looked damaged at all, not even cracked windows let alone the sort of damage even a small bomb would have caused. Several officers from the local sheriff's department were standing around doing their best not to look completely baffled.

Chris spotted the star that indicated the sheriff and walked over, "what are we looking at?"

"Like nothing I've ever seen before." The sheriff replied after checking his badge, "there was a disturbance shortly after sundown last night, when the manager investigated the occupant, a…Mr Young…told her his brother had had an epileptic turn."

"She accepted that?" Chris asked after a glance at the woman hovering worriedly near the office door.

"Apparently she's completely unfamiliar with epilepsy and had no problem believing the bang was caused by someone having a seizure. She warned them that if there were further disturbances she'd have to ask them to leave. There weren't any more noises, and she wasn't too worried since they were due to leave this morning. She went to check on them when they didn't check out on time, opening the door when no one responded to her knock. That's when she found the damage and called us."

"And the occupants?"

"Absolutely no sign, if they were in there during the blast it didn't cause anything to hit them as there's no sign of blood."

"Hospital admissions?"

"None that could be from going through an explosion, even as small a one as this one was."

"Your forensic techs found anything?"

"She took one look around with her tools and told us we needed an expert."

"Any idea what surprised her?"

"She wouldn't tell us, said she wanted whatever expert we got to not be tainted by her impressions."

"Okay, let's have a look."

The sheriff led him over to the door of one of the rooms, and the rest of the team and Hendriksen joined him as he looked in. There was a distinct centre to the blast that looked to be dead centre of the rug on the floor, that rug and everything within about 6 feet was scorched, including the rug, bed, even the bedside table. The second bed was nearly untouched. None of the advertising flyers on the table just outside the blast zone had apparently been disturbed, nor had the things in the kitchenette.

"What kind of bomb doesn't have a concussive blast?" Buck asked.

"Did the tech test for accelerant?" Chris asked the sheriff.

"Yeah, she couldn't find any."

"Okay, so we don't have to repeat that. Could you get her to send her samples to the ATF lab though?"

"Already done."

"Okay, let's see if there's anything invisible to the eye. JD?"

"On it." JD pulled out a black light lamp and switched it on in preparation for going over the room with a fine tooth comb. None of them were prepared for symbols to light up everywhere the light hit, "holy freaking hell…"

"You're the symbols expert, Josiah, any idea what this is?"

Josiah took the lamp from JD and moved carefully through the room being careful not to disturb anything. There were symbols on every wall, some high, some low, but he suspected the placement wasn't even remotely random. A faint glow from under the rug led him to flip up the edge to reveal a much more extensive symbol entirely hidden by the rug. The flooring under the rug was untouched by the blast, a distinct border showing where the rug had been.

The former priest looked back at the door where Chris was still waiting for an answer, "most of these I haven't seen ever, not even in esoteric books filled with untranslated gobbledygook stashed in some university library in the hope that one day someone will figure out how to translate it."

"But you do recognise some?"

Josiah nodded and pointed out a few of them, "whoever drew these was scared. They're generally believed to be warding symbols for those who believe in those sorts of things."

"So this isn't some sort of…satanic mumbo-jumbo?" The sheriff asked shakily.

Josiah shook his head, "not unless the rest of this is to do with something like that, which I doubt. That type of person tends to stick to a pattern, pentagram, inverted crosses, that sort of thing, regardless of the original meanings. I do not see anything of that type here."

"What do you mean 'regardless of the original meanings'?" The sheriff asked.

"Some symbols have come to be popularly associated with demons and Satanism. But the original meanings of those symbols were pretty much the opposite." Josiah explained, "take the pentagram for example. Pretty much everyone's first thought, when it's seen, is 'devil worship', and the fringe element of society that leans towards that uses it extensively with that meaning. However, the original meaning, and how anyone who actually believes in such things takes it, was actually as a protection against evil spirits and often considered to be able to trap demons."

"So whoever drew these symbols?" Chris asked, gesturing around the room.

"Was evidently someone who not only believed in the supernatural but also believed that something, or somethings, was coming after them."

"So…what…schizophrenic? Paranoid? Paranoid schizophrenic?" The sheriff asked.

"Possible. Though someone that delusional wouldn't have the rationality to construct any sort of bomb let alone one as puzzling as this."

"The manager did say that Mr Young mentioned a brother with epilepsy, maybe the brother is responsible for this and Mr Young for the device." The sheriff commented.

"Did she ever actually meet the brother?" Chris asked.

"Um…let me check…"

The sheriff went and talked briefly with the manager then returned a moment later, "she only met Mr Young."

"So the brother mightn't actually be real. This room is out of view of the office so anyone could have come and gone without her seeing." Nathan noted.

"So we'd better track down this Mr Young and ask him what the hell happened. Did the manager give a description?" Chris decided.

"Vaguely." The sheriff answered, flipping open his notebook, "tall, probably over 6 foot, green eyes. Apparently, she was rather enamoured of the eyes."

"Okay, did they pay cash or credit card?"

"Credit card." He handed over the notebook so they could get the number.

Chris jotted it down then handed it to JD, "get a trace on this will you?"

JD nodded and returned to their vehicles to pull out his laptop and start working on that. Chris turned his attention back to the others.

"Victor, Josiah, document this…artistic endeavour. Buck, Nathan, see if you can locate anyone who might have seen anything last night. Vin, see if your tracking skills can find anything. Ezra, with me." They all nodded and set about their various tasks, Ezra following Chris as he headed back towards the vehicles.

"You're thinking Hunters who got a little more than they bargained for?" Ezra asked softly when they were out of earshot of the sheriff's department officers and Hendriksen.

"Either that or a complete nutcase. See if you can dig up anything that may have caught the attention of a Hunter."

"Will do." Ezra gave his two-fingered tip of the hat and headed off.

Buck and Nathan canvassed the surrounding rooms then spread out further, while Vin put his tracking skills to use seeing if there was anything that was unusual after checking the maps for the area. The various searches were uneventful for a couple of hours.

Vin glanced down the alley almost out of habit, there were no signs of anyone entering to his tracker's eye, and he'd already checked whether there were any doors that opened onto the alley. So he was somewhat surprised to see someone standing there impassively.

With a frown he approached him cautiously, freeing the small backup pistol from his ankle holster. There were a few supernatural creatures that could effectively teleport. Hopefully, he could deal with whatever it was if it turned out to be one of those creatures.

"Sir? I'm an ATF agent, could you identify yourself please?"

The grey-haired man looked around at him. For a moment Vin thought he wasn't going to answer.

"Zachariah."

"There a surname to go along with that?" Vin asked when that was all that was forthcoming. Zachariah just looked at him, "okay…mind telling me what you're doing here?"

Zachariah gave him a mildly irritated look, "I don't have time for this."

Vin had the pistol aimed the instant the man started moving towards him, the silver bullets had absolutely no effect though. Then the man was at him and tapped his forehead too fast for him to duck. Everything went black.

The gunshot brought Buck at a run to the alley, he wasn't expecting to see Vin crumpled on the ground with no evidence of anyone, or anything, to warrant a gunshot.

Hastily Buck dashed to Vin's side even as he called for Nathan. He tapped Vin's cheeks gently.

"Hey, Vin…Vin."

Nathan and Chris arrived nearly simultaneously just as Vin woke up.

"Where'd the arsehole go?"

"Who?" Buck asked.

"Vin? You okay?" Chris demanded worriedly.

"You hurting anywhere?" Nathan asked, making Vin look at him and checking his eyes, "headache or dizziness?"

Vin pulled his head out of Nathan's grip, "enough, I'm fine. There was a guy standing here…no evidence of anyone entering the alley and no doors."

"That who you shot at?" Buck asked. Vin picked up his backup weapon and showed it to him before sticking it back in his ankle holster.

"Didn't even blink when the bullet hit him." Vin said to Chris' raised eyebrow, "then he tapped my forehead, and everything went black."

"He tapped your forehead?" Nathan asked, "he didn't hit you?"

"Yeah. Said his name was Zachariah, didn't give a surname."

Chris held out his hand and pulled Vin back to his feet, "you sure you're feeling okay?"

"Yeah, just pissed off. What was that arsehole?" Vin grumbled.

"No idea. But I'm betting it had something to do with what happened in that room." Buck stated.

"Anyone else find anything other than disappearing people who don't blink at bullets?" Chris asked, more than a little grouchily.

"Did talk to a lady who remembered seeing a woman approach that room shortly after the car out the front of it left, a big old black car was her description." Buck replied, "she gave a very accurate description of the woman."

"And?" Vin asked. From the look on Buck's face, it wasn't going to be good.

"Remember that alert we got about Ashley Cooper a while back?"

"You're shitting me, the dental hygienist who went nuts and started killing babies?"

"Either it was her, or she was the spitting image of the girl."

"That puts a different spin on all those symbols." Chris noted.

"You thinking demon?" Vin asked.

"Would explain the sudden change in personality, but that artistic endeavour didn't look like the usual requirements for an exorcism."

"Maybe it wasn't a usual demon. There were a few odd ones to come out of the gate from what I've heard." Nathan noted.

"Just what we need. Any indication that the, presumed, Hunters succeeded in whatever they were trying to do?" Buck asked.

"Not unless Josiah and Ezra have turned up anything." Chris replied, "let's get back and see if they've turned up anything."

Ezra was the only one who had turned up anything substantial so far; an electrical problem that had made the papers, and some anomalous weather the previous night. JD had turned up that the credit card was actively being used on the other side of the town, the deputies who were dispatched to collect whoever was using it found the card in the possession of several homeless people. It was a very effective way to cover their tracks, which at least suggested the Hunters they were reasonably sure had been the occupants of the room had got out alive at least. Josiah wouldn't have any esoteric results of his investigation until after he had the time to call his contacts that night.


	5. Chapter 5: More Questions than Answers

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **.**

 **Chapter 5: More Questions than Answers**

They gathered in Chris' room the next morning with the exception of Henriksen.

"We really need to talk to Vic about all this stuff, it's getting harder to hide it from him." Vin noted.

"Agreed." Chris replied, "next time we get a chance we'll take him to the cabin. Josiah, did you get anything?"

"I called Bobby, and he was able to identify all of the symbols." Josiah reported, "most are warding symbols against a variety of creatures. The rest are symbols that are used in an Enochian exorcism ritual."

"Enochian?" JD asked.

"According to legend, it is the language used by the angels themselves. Many of the wards were also Enochian."

"He just knew all that?" Vin asked.

"He reported that he found and provided the exorcism to a pair of Hunters a while back."

"Was he kind enough to say who?" Buck asked.

"He refused to say, he did say that they were alive and well though. Though he did say there was a good chance he and they were not the only ones to know the ritual."

"Wonderful, another unknown. Is he always that cagy?" Chris grumbled, Josiah couldn't blame him. This was the third time the information he'd gained from the old Hunter had been phrased exceptionally warily.

"Not usually from my experience, but there's more than a few Hunters who are on the paranoid side, and he would risk losing their contact if they suspected he'd provided their information to anyone, let alone a known ATF agent even if they're also a Hunter."

"Wonderful." Chris returned sarcastically, "well, weird stuff out of the way, let's meet up with Victor and have breakfast."

Meeting up with the FBI agent at breakfast was rather uneventful, if Henriksen suspected they'd had a private discussion before meeting up with him he gave no indication.

"I had to pass on the information regarding Ashley Cooper." Chris commented as they headed to the cars, "so expect the team hunting her at some point."

"How do you want us to handle that?" Buck asked.

"Give us your cooperation we hope." Another voice interrupted, and they looked at two suit-clad men who approached them, badges held out almost confrontationally, "in fact…we're going to insist you do."

"We're the first on site, and it's a bomb, that makes it our lead." Chris stated blandly.

"We might be willing to go along with that…if we had any faith in your…competence." They glanced at Ezra and Victor on that last word, and every member of the Seven bristled.

"Whatever your opinion of my team members." Chris replied, and the temperature seemed to drop in the immediately surrounding area, "this is my case until my boss pulls me off it. You're welcome to take your case up with him. Until, and only then, your dealings with this case goes through my team and me. Is that clear?"

"But…"

"Your badges, please." Chris continued as if they hadn't tried to interrupt, and begrudgingly they handed them over. Chris glanced over the badges and handed them to Ezra, hiding a smirk as the two agents failed to hide their own dislike of his choice, "run them."

Ezra nodded and moved over to the vehicle where JD's laptop was already hooked into the ATF network.

"Out of the office in Indianapolis." Ezra reported as he returned the badges to Chris.

Chris nodded and handed the badges back to the agents coldly, "I'm guessing you want to go over what we have on Ms Cooper's movements. Buck, Josiah, could you go over what was gathered from the witnesses with Agent Simon Rogers."

The blond gestured towards the appropriate agent.

He gestured towards the other one, "Ezra, Vin, could you get from Agent Peter Jones what they have on Ms Cooper and her connections?"

The indicated members of the Seven nodded their agreement, the FBI agents predictably protested.

"Now hang on a minute…"

"Ms Cooper is the only lead we currently have on the construction and detonation of that bomb." Chris stated, "we need to see what you have. If you make this difficult for us, your boss will hear from ours. Understood?"

On getting a couple of mumbled grudging agreements, the team split up.

"Kind of tossed him to the wolves there." Victor said almost hesitantly after a while.

"Oh, Vin will make sure Ezra doesn't eviscerate him too badly." Chris replied, and grinned when Henriksen blinked, "Ezra loves tweaking the noses of those who believe the rumours about him, and who am I to forbid him a little bit of fun."

Chris kept rest of them all together and started them on going through every CCTV footage they could locate. Josiah and Buck joined them a little while later, and not long after that Vin and Ezra do so also.

"You finished up fast." Chris commented.

"Well I would have played with them a little more, Mr Larabee, except it became obvious Mr Tanner was battling a headache." Ezra replied.

The sniper rolled his eyes, "seriously, Ez? You going to send me home to get coddled for a sniffle next?"

"He was right to do so." Nathan interrupted, "you got knocked out yesterday, remember?"

"Nate…"

"Vin." Chris stated, concern more than visible on his face, "shut up and let Nathan look at you."

Vin grumbled but complied when Nathan waved him to a chair so he could check him over.

"Well?" Chris asked once the medic finished.

"No signs of a concussion, I'd like to have him get an MRI to make sure though." Nathan replied.

"Oh, come on." Vin complained.

"The only reason I didn't let Nathan drag you off to the hospital yesterday is you didn't even have a headache. Now you do, so now you're going." Chris told him firmly.

Victor could swear that Vin looked almost betrayed as the tall medic led him out to the cars.

Several tense hours later and they were back, the test hadn't found anything. A fact Vin didn't shy away from making a point of.

To the relief of everyone, the two FBI agents left grumpily that afternoon when no further sign of their quarry turned up. In some ways Victor could understand their ill humour, she'd apparently pulled disappearing acts several times in the time they'd been tracking her, but he couldn't understand why they'd be so abrasive to people who could only help them.

Ezra hung back as the Seven and Henriksen split up into the separate rooms they'd been put up in. They were headed back to Denver in the morning, all they could do was let the techs stew on what evidence had been gathered and try to give them a lead on what the bomb had been made out of, not that there was a high chance of that. Nathan had insisted that Vin spend the night in his room since the headache hadn't gone away and he wanted to ensure there weren't any problems, the MRI coming up clear not particularly reassuring him with the persistence of it.

"You wanted to talk to me?" Chris asked, and Ezra nodded. The blond waved him into the room and did a quick bug sweep before turning back to him, "okay, shoot."

"I believe Ms Cooper survived her possession." Ezra told him, "the electronic copies of the fingerprints had been swapped out."

"That's not something a demon would bother with, nor most Hunters even if the victim survived." Chris noted.

"Exactly. I arranged some 'unexpected degradation' to happen to the physical copies, nothing that can be traced back to us of course. No need to risk all that effort being undone just because someone did due diligence. Very skilful piece of hacking though, I'd hate to have to face off against whoever managed that."

"Here's hoping we don't have to." Chris agreed.

Ezra nodded then saw himself out the door and to his own room. Chris sighed, it was always tough to know what to do about the more shady things many Hunters had to do in order to get by. Not many were law enforcement, and Hunting didn't exactly pay the bills. He guessed he should just thank his lucky stars that generally it was only petty crimes that Hunters got involved with so it didn't usually end up on his radar and force him to make a choice. He shook his head and shelved the thoughts for the night, climbing into his bed for the night.


	6. Chapter 6: Convergence

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 6: Convergence**

[Immediately after Chapter 70 of Pivot Point]

Even with him being FBI the ATF team had started including him in some outside activities. Not that he was real sure about camping so they could see his skills, not with the brief overview Dean had given of the other creatures out there anyway. At least Chris had a cabin they were using instead of tents, not that Victor could think of a way to put down the salt he didn't feel comfortable sleeping without anymore with everyone else there.

Vin had brought him out ahead of the others, there being various things that had popped up that the rest were delayed with. That the headaches still hadn't cleared up was the only reason the sniper wasn't having to deal with those things also.

"I still reckon it ain't real camping if you have a cabin, but Chris has done this up real nice." Vin commented as he let them both in. He didn't mention that those nice things included iron fittings, demon traps under various rugs, and the wall cavities being filled with salt. There was a reason this was a preferred time away spot for the Hunters making up the team.

"Never really had time to." Henriksen said uncomfortably, "then after barely escaping with my life there were more important things."

"Yeah, staring death in the face tends to crystallise what you think is important." Vin agreed, taking off his weapon holsters and dumping them on the table. Victor was amused to note that the sniper had a backup weapon in an ankle holster.

"I'm sure some would think I should have got out after that, especially since I'm a pariah now. Just…I can't just stop wanting to help."

"I get that." Vin glanced out the window, "sun's going down, wanna help me get a fire started? The others should be on their way."

"Sounds good."

He turned to follow Vin out the door but said door suddenly splintered and burst inward before the sniper got to it.

"Shit!" Vin dived for his weapons but the man, creature, lashed out at him and effortlessly threw him into the opposite wall.

Victor dodged backwards and regarded the being with horror, one thing he knew without a doubt was that he didn't know enough to identify what this was let alone figure out what would kill it. He yanked out his phone and hit one of the emergency speed dials he'd set up. A couple of rings later it was picked up while he backed away from whatever it was.

"Vic?" Sam asked over the phone, it sounded like he was in the car.

"Sam…uh…" he yelped as the creature leapt at him and he barely dived out of the way.

"What are you facing?" Sam demanded, his voice calm but urgent.

"Uh…claws, fangs, animal eyes, otherwise human…I think." Victor replied hurriedly, backing away from the creature that turned to stalk him. In his peripheral vision, he saw Vin struggling to get up. Hopefully, he wasn't too hurt, Chris would shoot him if he was. Of course, if this thing kept doing what it was the team leader wouldn't get to shoot him, he had a feeling the bullet would be less painful.

"Sounds like a werewolf." Sam replied, "silver knife or bullet to the heart will kill it. Do NOT let it bite you."

"Silver? Where the hell am I going to get anything silver fast, let alone something deadly?"

He dodged the creature again and saw Vin leap for his weapons again. Apparently, it took more than being tossed into a wall to take the sniper down.

"Where are you?" Sam asked.

"Uh…" Victor knew why he was asking, just didn't think they were going to get to him in time. They probably weren't even in the same state.

Vin yanked out his weapon that was in the ankle holster then spun and bulls-eyed the creature in the chest. It stopped as if poleaxed then slowly toppled.

"One." Vin said breathlessly, "best place for killing silver is my ankle holster. Two, how the hell do you have a Hunter on speed dial?"

"Vic!"

"Uh…still alive. The ATF agent I'm with had silver bullets…"

"Okay…good…stick us on speaker will you, I'll do the same here." The relief was audible in Sam's voice.

Shakily he switched to speaker and put it down.

"Done."

"Hey, Vic." Dean's voice floated over the phone, Sam had obviously switched to speaker faster than he had, "you okay? That did not sound good from my end."

"Well, we're both still alive. The movies don't get those accurate, huh?" Victor answered.

"Not even close." Dean replied, "either of you get bit?"

"Nope." Vin answered, "I got a tad close to the claws, but Vic dodged pretty good. I'm Vin by the way."

"Sam."

"Dean."

"Good thing you had those silver bullets." Sam commented.

Vin shot a half amused glance at Victor, "the entire team are also Hunters."

"That's certainly handy." Dean noted.

"Yeah, particularly as we got the reputation of being able to make weird go bye-bye rather than have it hamstring our cases."

"Wish I'd had that knack." Victor commented.

"How'd you meet? I know Vic's not a Hunter." Vin asked.

"Demons." Dean replied.

"How'd you pick that?" Victor asked at the same time.

"Flashed Hunter sign at you and you didn't react. Demons huh? That at the police station that vaporised?" Vin replied.

Victor nodded.

"That was a demon called Lilith, just so you know." Sam commented.

"Odd name." Vin commented.

"The first demon." Dean elaborated.

"Oh…oh shit. That powerful a demon is wandering about?"

"Not anymore. We dumped her arse back in hell in the most permanent way we could find."

"I wouldn't want to be trying to do that even with the rest of the team backing me up." Vin replied, "speaking of which…I'd better give them the heads up before they walk in on this mess."

He pulled out his phone and called JD, Chris was probably behind the wheel by this point.

"Hi Vin, we're finally on our way." JD answered.

"That's great, 'cause I got a clean-up on aisle two."

He could almost hear the young agent stiffen.

"Shit, you okay? What about Victor?"

There was a muffled query that sounded like Chris' voice, and JD replied, "clean up on aisle two."

Even over the phone, he could hear the engine kick into high gear as Chris floored it.

"Yeah, we're both fine. Don't need to give him the dangers 101 speech though, he already knows enough to know who to call."

"Okay, we'll be there as soon as we can."

JD hung up, undoubtedly to be growled at by Chris for not letting him speak to Vin himself.

"Guess you'd need code words for that stuff in your profession." Sam commented.

"Yeah, just in case it's being recorded. So…Sam and Dean? The Sam and Dean who were supposed to have been in the cells of that police station when it went up?"

"Uh…I hope you're not going to report that…" Victor said hesitantly.

"Hell no, I'm just glad to know that two of the best Hunters are still alive. A lot of the old Hunter families have been wiped out, glad to know that one of the real good new Hunter families is still alive and kicking."

"Actually we're not that new." Dean replied, "turns out our mother was a Campbell."

"Wow, that's a name that hasn't be heard in a while."

"Yeah, Yellow Eyes wiped pretty much all of them off the map before we were born except for mum."

"Yellow Eyes?"

"Demon by the name of Azazel, had yellow eyes."

"Blasted demons, can't even get them to go away permanently, sooner or later the annoying ones climb back out of hell."

"This one ain't after being shot with the Colt."

"The Colt? As in THE Colt? I thought that was a legend."

"A legend that just happens to be real."

With a clatter the rest of Team Seven arrived.

Chris glanced at the body of the werewolf, "Josiah."

"On it." The big agent replied, grabbing the corpse and hauling it outside.

"Nathan, check 'em."

"I'm fine, Chris." Vin protested.

"Only if you include being tossed into a wall by something with claws in the definition of 'fine'." Victor replied, and Vin glared at him.

"Uses the same definition as Dean, I see." Sam commented with a laugh.

"Look who's talking." Dean retorted, "let's see…there's the 'fine' of having just being zapped by a witch."

"Protective sigils absorbed most of it."

"Yeah, most. You were burnt, Sammy. Then there was the 'fine' of working yourself to exhaustion refusing to rest until you'd saved everyone you could at that reservation."

"It needed to be done."

"It didn't need to be done all in one lump, the more recent victims could have waited for you to rest."

"We couldn't be sure about that. Anyway, you're one to talk. The wishing well sandwich ring a bell?"

"Don't remind me."

Chris raised an eyebrow at Vin, and the sniper chuckled even as the tall medic came over to check him.

"That's Sam and Dean, two hunters that Victor had on speed dial. First thing he did after that poor bastard burst in the door."

"Fat lot of good that would have done us, no idea where I would have got silver in order to kill it if you hadn't had silver bullets in your gun."

"Most people would have stood there frozen denying what was in front of them until the thing tore out their heart so don't be so hard on yourself."

"Just glad we didn't have to plan B it." Dean commented.

"What's plan B?" JD asked curiously.

"Hunt down and kill the thing that killed a friend." Sam replied grimly.

"I'm kinda glad you didn't have to either, I much prefer being alive." Victor replied.

"Me too." Vin put in and winced as Nathan probed the shallow gashes the werewolf had left.

"Not too bad." Nathan said, pulling out dressings and bandages from his kit, "they don't need stitches."

Chris nodded before looking at the phone, "I'm Chris. I know how Hunters usually operate. You chasing a case right now?"

"Trying to find someone that's in danger actually." Sam replied.

"How do you know they're in danger?"

There was silence for a moment before Sam spoke again, "a psychic had a vision. We've managed to track down the city but haven't located the person yet."

Victor felt a chill go through him as he realised the psychic was probably Sam himself, not that he would reveal that to strangers and he was counting on Henriksen not revealing it either.

"A psychic vision?" Josiah asked from the door, "that's a rare gift. Always a good idea to pay attention to them."

Chris turned to look at the big agent, "Josiah. Taken care of the poor bastard?"

"Yeah, dosed him with salt and stuffed him in the kiln." Josiah replied, the cabin had originally been Sarah's artsy get away. Since her and Adam's deaths at the hands of a demon not just the cabin had been converted to a new use, "maybe we can help them find the target, visions don't happen randomly."

Chris looked at him for a moment, "okay. Sam, was the psychic able to draw a picture?"

"Yes."

"Okay. See if you can get a photo of it to us. What city did you track it to?"

"Denver."

"Denver?" Josiah repeated shocked.

"Yeah, why?"

"That's where we are." Josiah looked at Chris.

"I'll get Victor to send you my address, and we'll go to the main house to meet you there." Chris decided.

"Sounds like a plan." Dean replied.

"Good." Chris nodded at Victor, who hung up then messaged the address. Then the Seven and Henriksen headed back.

"Why didn't Bobby contact you about it?" Chris asked Josiah as they sorted out the car occupancy, "he has to know you'd help and that we would too."

"He knows I'm ATF, but I haven't specifically told him the rest of my team are also Hunters. There's every chance it didn't go through Bobby, though, it could be someone who knows and trusts those two. It can be dangerous for psychics to entrust knowledge of their abilities even to Hunters, there's too many out there who'd either see the gifting as either demonic or indicating that they're less than human."

"I see." Chris sighed, "I did hear them refer to using sigils to protect against a blast from a witch in that banter, right?"

"When did that get said?" Josiah asked.

It took a second to click, "you were outside dealing with the werewolf. They bantered about various injuries that each of them had brushed off as being 'fine' from the sound of it. One was getting burnt from a blast from a witch that sigils absorbed most of."

"I'm guessing we're about to meet the pair from that incident. I wonder if Victor recognised them in the footage."

"Even if he did there's no point getting annoyed about it, he had no idea that he could trust us with that information. I'm sure he contacted them if he recognised them and he's smart enough to figure out a way to 'obtain' the information if there was something we needed to know."

Josiah gave him an approving grin, and Chris found it hard to be more than mildly annoyed with the older agent. There was definitely a time where he would have been furious regardless of the circumstances.

They were surprised to find the brothers with their big black car waiting for them when they got there. Their size wasn't apparent immediately since they were lounging on the car itself. The two of them shared an apparently concerned look then got to their feet, and Chris nearly did a double take. The shorter of the two actually topped Josiah in height, who was considered the giant of the team, but looked like a midget next to the other.

"Hi, I'm Chris." He introduced himself then pointed at the rest of the team, "Buck, Vin, Nathan, Josiah, JD, and Ezra. You already know Victor. Come on in."

"I'm Dean, this is my brother, Sam." The shorter introduced before following him inside.

JD disappeared into the kitchen to grab coffees for everyone.

"Okay, so what do you know?" Chris asked when they all had coffee.

The brothers shared a wordless look before Dean inclined his head to Sam, deferring control of the information to him.

"Okay, first thing you need to know…" Sam said, "is that I'm the psychic that had the vision."

Victor nearly snorted his coffee out of his nose in surprise.

"Okay, that tells me Vic knew, and he also didn't expect you to tell us." Chris noted.

"Considering it can be dangerous for psychics to entrust that information to others I'm surprised also." Josiah noted.

"What's the threat that would make you risk that?" Chris asked.

"I don't know. I do know that it isn't a normal threat though." Sam replied.

"How do you know that? And who's the one threatened?" Josiah asked.

Sam didn't answer verbally. Instead, he pulled out a notepad, flipped it open then turned it around to show them.

"What the…?" Chris exclaimed.

Perfectly drawn on the piece of paper was a sketch of Vin.

"Okay, that explains how you know it can't be a normal threat. Vin wouldn't have any difficulty with anything normal, normal for a Hunter anyway." Josiah commented, "no indications of what though?"

Sam shook his head, "just that it's slow and already in progress."

"Can't be the werewolf from earlier then, they're anything but slow." Vin noted.

"And the only thing even slightly odd happening with him is the headaches." Nathan said.

"Headaches?" Sam asked.

"They're not exactly debilitating." Vin retorted with annoyance, "just constantly in the background."

"Headaches can be connected to a few odd things, especially in the psychic field." Dean said.

"Thought Sam was the psychic." Vin asked.

"Who do you think has to pick him up when his abilities knock him for six?" Dean replied.

"You got a headache now?" Sam asked before Vin could reply.

"No." Vin replied after a moment of thought.

"Thought so."

"Why?" Josiah asked.

"Because I'm shielding him."

"Uh…I thought that wasn't possible, from what I've learnt of psychic abilities anyway."

The brothers shared an uncomfortable look.

"Let's just say…when it comes to me, just throw out the rulebook." Sam told him finally.

"Holy crap, what else can you do?" Josiah asked.

"How about telling me what I'm not supposed to be able to do, and I'll tell you whether I can."

"Many can sense ghosts."

"Yep."

"Powerful ones can sense demons."

"Definitely."

"I've never heard of one who can sense more."

"Now you have." Dean replied when Sam stayed silent.

"I take it peeling demonic influence off people is…" Victor left it hanging.

"Impossible." Josiah replied.

Dean snorted, "congratulations Sammy, you were doing the impossible within months of getting these powers."

"It's not that hard…maybe that's just because others haven't thought to try or haven't had need to." Sam replied.

"What? Have you forgotten the headaches? Or puking up your guts? Or spiking a fever?"

"In comparison to some of the other things, yes it is easy."

"That doesn't sound very fun." Josiah noted.

"It isn't." Sam acknowledged, "but it's short-lived."

"Which is more than can be said for some of the other side effects." Dean grumbled.

"Let's not go there." Sam retorted gently.

"Not all smooth sailing then?" Josiah asked.

Sam shrugged, "there's no instruction book for this. Aside from general guidelines, it's been trial and error."

"That must be interesting at times."

"That's an understatement." Dean grumbled.

Anything Sam could have come up with in response was interrupted by his phone ringing, he gave it a surprised look when he saw the caller id then answered.

"Pam?"

Dean raised an eyebrow at the name before muttering, "blasted psychics."

"Hi Sam, how's that sexy arse of yours today?" Pamela asked.

Sam nearly rolled his eyes, "my arse is perfectly okay, Pam."

Dean chuckled, and Sam glared at him.

"So why did I need to call you?"

Sam blinked for a second, "um…maybe because I've just found someone who needs some training?"

"That would do it. Where should I come?"

"Denver, Colorado. I'll text you the address."

"Sounds good. See you soon." Pam hung up.

"Who was that?" Chris asked.

"Pamela Barnes. Strong psychic who taught me the basics." Sam explained, "shall I send this address or would you prefer we met her elsewhere?"

Chris glanced at the members of his team before looking back at Sam, "send her this address. Should be safe enough here."

"Okay." Sam opened up the message function on his phone and sent the message to Pam.

AN: Edited to take care of a couple of errors that a reader was kind enough to point out.


	7. Chapter 7: Learning

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **.**

 **Chapter 7: Learning**

To Sam's relief, Vin wasn't completely ignorant of meditation techniques. Though the specific methods for building shields were not commonly taught even amongst those who were aficionados of meditation. What he did know was a good foundation to build from while they waited for Pam to arrive. He mightn't know much about the specific techniques that other psychics used, but he did know meditation and after having to teach it to Dean knew well how to explain it.

He was just about to get started when some movement outside the window caught his attention. Vin also reacted, but with that carefully controlled manner that indicated he was trying to conceal he'd seen anything. If Sam hadn't seen what he was responding to, he'd probably have missed it.

"You see that?" He asked in a carefully casual way.

Vin actually blushed, "uh…Nathan thinks it's because of the headaches…"

Sam barely kept from rolling his eyes, though he couldn't fault the medic all that much. Without knowing the sniper was a psychic he couldn't have known to check for phenomena along those lines. Instead, he turned to look at his brother and Vin's friends, Dean was facing in the general direction of the window.

"Dean, did you see anything move outside the window?" He called. Sam didn't miss that Vin ducked his head and blushed even more.

Dean shook his head even as Nathan sighed and spoke up, "No one has ever seen anything whenever he's mentioned it since the headache started. I've been trying to talk him into getting a CAT scan…"

"Yeah…that's not it." Sam stated, "I saw it too."

Vin sent a surprised look in his direction.

Dean sat up on alert and put his drink to the side, "psychic thing? Your spidey sense pick up anything? How much did you see?"

"Just saw movement, probably saw all of it but too brief to consciously note."

Dean frowned, then reached over and snagged Sam's sketch book from where it still was on the table.

"No idea if that'll work, Dean." Sam pointed out.

"No idea if it won't either, Sasquatch." Dean retorted, "can't hurt to try, if it works we'll know what we're dealing with if it doesn't…well…we won't be any worse off."

Sam nodded his head as he conceded the argument. The Seven and Henriksen were looking between the two of them with thoroughly confused expressions, neither brother decided to explain right then. If it worked seeing it would take care of most of the explanation.

Sam flipped open to a blank page and looked dubiously at it before bringing the pencil down to the paper. He was pleasantly surprised when an image flowed out onto the page.

"What the…" Buck mumbled as the picture formed.

"Psychokinetic drawing." Josiah commented in fascination, "I'd heard about it…but it's incredibly rare. And definitely not usually this detailed."

Sam shrugged a little embarrassedly, "only ever tried it with the visions."

"How did you figure out you could? From what I've read it takes a lot of concentration."

"Just happened the first time I tried to draw what I saw in a vision." Sam mumbled.

"Play twenty questions later." Dean interrupted, "any idea what the floating fugly is?"

Josiah shook his head, "haven't come across it in my researches, but I didn't really go too far into the esoteric psychic phenomena since I didn't…or thought I didn't…actually know any psychics."

"We don't know most of it either." Sam told him, "usually too busy just dealing with stuff to research beyond the 'what is it, how to kill it' information. Barely scratched the surface of the things to research beyond that."

Dean snapped a picture of the sketch, "I'll send it to Bobby, maybe he'll have some idea."

Unfortunately, when the older Hunter got back to them an hour later, he hadn't had any luck finding out what the creature was. Sam and Vin had spent the intervening time in meditation, though that hadn't been very easy knowing the creature was outside somewhere.

Sam frowned thoughtfully as Dean finished up the phone call with Bobby and sent the picture to the Shaman as he suggested.

Barely ten seconds had passed before Dean's phone lit up with a call from the Shaman.

"Shaman?" Dean answered after giving his phone a surprised look.

"Dean. I take it you've encountered another psychic that that creature is feeding off?"

Dean blinked for a second, "let me just put you on speaker, we're with a group of Hunters who are also Law Enforcement."

He waited for the agreement before switching the phone to speaker and quickly introducing the agents.

"So…how did you know it wasn't Sam? What is that thing anyway?" Dean asked.

"That is a psileech, they only go after psychics that don't have shields. Not a description of Sam."

"True…" Dean commented and thought for a moment, "so if we get Vin to develop shields he should be okay?"

"I wish." The Shaman replied with a sigh, "once they have their hooks into a psychic nothing will get them to go away. Dean…I know you and Sam will hate this but…there's nothing you can do."

"What?" Dean asked, shocked. Since he'd learnt of Sam's powers, the Shaman had been very wary of declaring anything impossible for the young Hunter.

"There is no way we're just writing off Vin." Chris declared, his face visibly darkening at even the suggestion.

"Chris, right?" The Shaman asked, placing the voice from the introductions, "I'm really sorry. In the entire recorded history of encounters with that creature no psychic, either individually or in groups, has been able to even survive taking one on let alone actually succeed. It just results in more deaths along with the original target."

Dean ran a hand over his face, the only thing that made him want to argue was that Sam's visions didn't generally send them to situations that were hopeless. Absently he noted that his brother hadn't spoken up at the information and looked around for him.

"Um…did anyone see where Sam went?" He asked with a sigh when he couldn't see his brother anywhere.

Chris was still glaring at the phone, Dean was glad the team leader didn't have heat vision or something since he was pretty sure the phone would be in a smouldering pit if he had, but the other agents glanced around. It was evident that none had noticed the younger brother leave.

The Shaman swore in his native language, and Dean made a mental note in the back of his mind to find out what he said since it sounded rather inventive, and he could always use more swear words. The majority of his attention was on trying to figure out where Sam might have gone. There was a massive concussive retort from outside before he'd got very far in figuring that out.

Dean was on his feet instantly and heading outside before he'd even consciously registered what it could mean. His brother was standing calmly between the house and the horse paddock, the only indication that something was out of the ordinary was that the horses were prancing about nervously.

"Sam? You okay?" Dean asked warily.

"Yep." Sam returned, "that thing won't be bothering Vin anymore though."

"You took it out?" Dean asked to confirm, more surprised by his lack of surprise than by the fact that Sam had apparently achieved the impossible…again.

"Yeah." Sam confirmed, "maybe when the Shaman gets back to us we'll know what it was also."

He bent down and picked up a handful of nothing, though Dean knew better than to think there was actually nothing there.

"He's on the phone at the moment actually." He told him, "it's called a psileech. And no one has ever survived going up against one."

"Oh…figures." Sam replied with a sigh.

Going back into the house he tossed the creature no one but he and Vin could see onto the table where they'd been doing the research. Several pages and pens moved in response, which caught the attention of the non-psychic agents. Vin slowly got up and walked over to the table, staring hard at the very dead creature.

"So that's the thing that was trying to kill me?" He asked softly. When Sam nodded in reply, he pulled out one of his many knives and drove it into the head of the creature. The rest of the agents gave another double take when the blade appeared to disappear.

"Sam. What happened?" The Shaman asked from the other end of the phone, getting tired of the lack of information.

"Shaman." Sam acknowledged respectfully, "good to hear your voice. Dean said you said that thing was called a psileech?"

"Well, that answers my next question. Yeah, if that's what you drew the picture of it's a psileech. You actually managed to kill it?"

"Yeah." Sam confirmed a little uncomfortably.

"You ever get tired of doing the impossible? Any issues?"

"Only if you count it using a lot of energy." Sam answered.

Dean promptly went over to their bags and pulled out a muesli bar, which he tossed to Sam, who rolled his eyes at his big brother but munched on it without argument.

"Don't forget to…"

"Up his calories." Dean interrupted, "already on it."

The Shaman chuckled, "I'm not surprised. You make a good team. Well…since the situation has resolved for the first time without requiring someone to get buried, I'll let you go. Would you mind if I get a message out requesting anyone encountering one gets in contact with me so I can get you to go deal with it?"

"I have no issue with that." Sam replied promptly, "I know you won't bandy our names around."

"Of course not. Thank you."

The Shaman rang off, and Dean shook his head with amusement.

"What was that about upping his calories?" Nathan asked.

"When he uses his abilities at the level he's the only one capable of he uses energy like a professional athlete." Dean explained, "so he needs to replenish it."

"Sounds like that would have been…interesting…to find out." Vin noted.

Dean nodded, "passed out at one point. Shaman figured out what was going on though."

Nathan looked like he was going to ask more, but the sedate rumble of a car engine forestalled him.

"Pam." Sam stated. Sure enough a few minutes later they were letting the vibrant psychic into the house.

She stopped in her tracks just inside the door as her eyes landed on the dead psileech still on the table.

"Sam." She asked after a silent moment, "what exactly did you manage to do this time?"

"Walloped it hard enough that it went down and stayed down." Sam replied with a sigh.

"No one thought to tell you it's been impossible previously?"

"Didn't find that out until afterwards."

Pam shook her head with amusement, "any side effects?"

"Only if you count it using a lot of energy."

Pam looked at him intently for a moment before rolling her eyes at him, "only you would consider that not an inconvenience."

She glanced around at the other people in the room before her eyes landed on Vin, "you must be the untrained psychic I'm here to help. My, you're as easy on the eyes as Sam over there."

Sam rolled his eyes while Vin blushed. Dean hid a grin as he realised that Vin was just as uncomfortable with the vibrant psychic's flirting as Sam was.

"Well now, if that's something you like you don't need to look any further than old Buck here." Buck put in with his eyes lighting up.

Pam gave him a grin, "I might just take you up on that, big guy, later tonight."

"Are you here to teach or to flirt?" Sam interrupted.

"Both." Pam retorted with a laugh, "life's no fun otherwise."

Sam rolled his eyes again, and Pam turned to the sniper with a chuckle, "well let's see what we have to work with. I'm guessing that Sam ran you through the basics on meditation while waiting for me?"

Vin nodded hesitantly, and Pam waved him into the mostly unused sitting room that he and Sam had used earlier. Chris disappeared into the kitchen to see about dinner, the original meal plan having gone out the window long ago, and Dean followed him a moment later once he was satisfied Sam was comfortable. The rest retreated a little awkwardly into the lounge room.

Vin and Pam joined the rest for dinner, and afterwards, the conversation turned to accommodation for the night. Chris' rance house was large, but not large enough to accommodate an extra three without some shuffling. The one thing that was certain was no one was going to be sent out into the night.

"It's fortified against pretty much everything. There's salt in the wall cavities, demon traps under various rugs, and iron fittings everywhere." Chris explained when the brothers looked a little reluctant to impose, even though their only other option was a random motel somewhere.

"Not everything." Dean stated, "but you probably don't need the extra stuff. You're not wanted dead by both heaven and hell after all."

"Ignoring the absence of heavenly entities being seen around the planet, how did you manage that feat?" Ezra asked.

"Got born." Sam replied with a shrug, "from what we can work out both heaven and hell want the apocalypse and to do it they need to kill me. Why we're not sure and they're not talking, not to us at least and not to the regular angels either. They're not happy with us for getting in the way of that. And angels, unless they're doing something with their powers, just look like humans usually."

"What kind of things?" Josiah asked.

"That we've seen; telekinesis, healing, a form of dreamwalking, some kind of teleporting, and a method of killing demons with light." Sam detailed.

"Teleporting?" Vin asked, suddenly getting a bad feeling.

Sam nodded, "never seen them take more than a few steps. Don't know how to kill them, or if it's even possible, but that shouldn't be necessary anyway. They only seem to be annoyed with me, and demons of course. They just knocked Dean out with two fingers when we first met one, though the angel came close to killing me before figuring out he'd been given false orders."

"Two fingers?" Vin asked, "like…a tap on the forehead?"

The rest of the team stiffened slightly, and neither brother missed it.

"Yeah. You encountered something that did that?" Sam returned.

"Right before his headache started." Nathan confirmed.

"Gave his name as Zachariah." Vin added.

"Not a name we're familiar with." Dean commented.

Sam pulled out his phone and sent a text to Anna, /"is the name Zachariah familiar to you?"/

The reply came back almost immediately, /"RUN!"/

Sam's eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hair as he saw it, before he could send another message explaining the angel belonging to the name wasn't present the phone lit up in a call from her.

"Gohol laiad." He answered, drawing baffled looks from the team.

"The hierarchy has got it wrong. Emotions are amazing." Anna answered woodenly, "please tell me Zachariah doesn't know you're there."

"It's not us who met him. Another Hunter did a while back, he knocked them out."

"Well be thankful for small blessings." Anna replied with audible relief.

"Why? Who is he?"

"He's a member of the hierarchy."

"That explains your concern."

"Unless they were from a missed branch of your family most humans encountering even one of the hierarchy would be safe."

"What do you mean? Why would someone from our family be in danger from angels?" Dean waved at him to put it on speaker, "one sec, I'm going to put you on speaker. It's not just Dean and I though, we're with the Hunter who encountered Zachariah and his friends."

It didn't take long to switch it to speaker and do a quick round of introductions.

"Probably not regular angels, they don't get let in on the hierarchy's plans for the most part." Anna continued, "they want there to be only the two Vessels, particularly with the line running through the Campbells. You wouldn't believe the machinations they went through to make sure the two lines meshed and resulted in you and Dean."

"Vessels? The people that give permission for angels to use them to walk around in?" Dean asked, "so it is genetic?"

"Yes, but there are levels of vessels, some can only accommodate regular angels. Like Castiel and Uriel. Stronger angels, like seraphim, require stronger vessels." Anna explained, "there are four lines of vessels that are the strongest in existence. The Archangel lines. One of which runs through the Winchesters, another ran through the Campbells. The meshing of the two lines resulted in the True Vessels of the archangels involved coming into existence. The two of you."

"Awesome." Dean grumbled, "any clue as to who it is we've got to avoid."

"Well…" Anna returned with obvious reluctance, "it's Michael for you, Dean. As for Sam…well…as long as you keep preventing the apocalypse from starting you'll never have to deal with Sam's."

It took longer than he'd expected for Sam to put the clues together, and Dean quickly reached out and squeezed his brother's arm as said brother lost all colour in his face.

"Damnit Anna, some warning would have been nice!" Dean snapped at the phone.

"You asked." Anna replied apologetically, "you okay, Sam?"

"Is it possible to be okay after learning that the only reason you were born was to be a meat suit for…for…?" Sam abruptly stood, "I need some air."

He was out the door before Dean could grab his arm again. The eldest brother swore as the door swung shut.

"Sorry." Anna apologised softly, "maybe I should have said he didn't want to know."

"He'd still have figured it out from that." Dean returned with a sigh, "sometimes he's too smart for his own good. Just tell me that his gifts aren't a result of that 'line'."

Anna's sigh was audible over the line, and Dean wanted to swear again, "not entirely. Naturally psychic abilities don't always come from a vessel line. However, it does run powerfully through that Line. It…has been known for a long while that it will be strong in the True Vessel, in part because of the mixing with the Michael line…that's why Azazel tried to cage it so he could control it. Even then he didn't manage fully. But being the True Vessel doesn't define him, if it did being unchained wouldn't have changed anything. Even if it had stayed in place, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been the most cooperative pawn. Both of you are way too stubborn to just comply with whatever role they had planned. My bet would be they'd have to trick you into doing whatever they wanted you to do."

"Yeah, well…try convincing him of that." Dean replied with a sigh, "I gotta go. Talk to you later Anna."

He hung up before she could say anything in reply then disappeared out the door after his brother. The Seven, Pam, and Henriksen looked at each other with pained sympathy.

"I'll get a guest room set up for them." Josiah rumbled, whatever conversation the brothers were having it was pretty much guaranteed they wouldn't be up to beginning the trip back to wherever they called home base or the next case they were on, before the morning.


	8. Chapter 8: Answers and Questions

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 8: Answers and Questions**

Josiah slipped into the guest room to confirm or deny a theory once the brothers left, which given how antsy Dean had got while waiting for Sam to wake he suspected was far later than usual. The sigils drawn in black light pen lighting up on the walls when he ran the black light over them confirmed what he'd suspected.

Chris raised an eyebrow at him when he came out with the light, "something I should know, Josiah? And I really don't want to know if one of them had to take care of needs."

Josiah chuckled, "nope. They're the ones who use those exotic sigils though."

"Huh…not really surprised actually. Though I do wonder what they were doing there and how they triggered that mini explosion. They can't have known it was going to happen or they'd have tried to get somewhere it wouldn't attract attention."

"Well…we do know there was a demon-possessed girl, who apparently survived the exorcism, involved along with an Enochian exorcism." Vin commented slowly, "and…before you arrived they mentioned booting a demon named Lilith back into hell in the most permanent way they could find."

Josiah sent a shocked look Vin's way, "Lilith…as in the first demon?"

Vin nodded, "that's the description they gave also."

Josiah shook his head, "and I thought we were good at dealing with supernatural crap."

"We are good at dealing with supernatural crap." JD stated as he joined them.

"Not as good as those two brothers." Chris stated with a chuckle, "they managed to exorcise the very first demon to ever come into existence, and save the girl it was possessing to boot."

"Not as good as might be possible though." Josiah noted, "they haven't been able to keep it unobtrusive several times."

"Most other Hunters wouldn't have been able to keep them from being massive messy incidents though." Vin pointed out.

"True."

Pam stuck around for another week training Vin, taking pleasure in making the sniper blush, though she spent the nights with Buck. The following weeks settled into relative normality for the team.

One Friday the seven and Henriksen gathered at Chris' place to relax after a successful week. As he enjoyed a beer, Chris wasn't expecting to get a message from Dean asking if he was free to chat. He wasted no time calling him back, neither brother had struck him as people who would even so much as lightly ask someone else, even a fellow Hunter, their opinion.

"What's up?" He asked after they exchanged the usual pleasantries.

Dean gave an amused snort, "you sitting down?"

Chris frowned and almost pulled the phone back to look at it warily, "that good huh? Do I need to put down this beer and jump in a car?"

Vin shot him a concerned look as he caught the comment, the fact that Chris had called the older brother in response to a message from him had been worrying enough.

"No…the action part is done with. Just trying to make sure it doesn't happen again and thought you might have some advice to help with that."

"Okay." Chris relaxed again and settled back, taking a drink of his beer, "how about you start with what happened."

The team leader relaxing told the other Hunter agents that there wasn't anything immediate to be concerned about.

"Well…it started a few hours after we left you guys." Dean started after taking a settling breath, "we got a call that our half brother had been taken."

"Holy crap, Dean, and you didn't think of giving us a call? I know you only met us recently, but we have connections for helping find someone who's missing, even if it is a supernatural cause."

Buck, who kept an eye on missing person reports as well as possible, quirked an eye at the blond, but he shook his head to indicate he didn't have a name.

"We figured out pretty quick he was taken by angels, and the last thing we'd want to do is expose others to that sort of danger. For the most part, they seem to leave people uninvolved alone, and we're hoping they'll stick to that. And even if they don't the risk is low if they don't know we're connected."

"Okay, fair enough. Since you say the action part is done with, I'm guessing you got him back?"

"He managed to escape actually, about a week ago, then called us." Dean swallowed before continuing softly, "we brought him back to Bobby's yesterday."

"What happened?" Chris asked as he noted that the other Hunter was nowhere near as settled about whatever had happened as he'd like to pretend. He scrawled down 'Sioux Falls' for Buck.

"There were demons waiting for us. One of them had possessed Bobby."

"Blast. That can't have been easy, Bobby started with demons and is easily the foremost expert in dealing with them."

That drew Josiah's concern since the older Hunter was a friend of his.

"No idea how they managed it, given Bobby was the one to give us anti-possession medallions after our first brush with possession I'd have been shocked if he didn't have one."

"Sam wasn't able to do anything?"

"He was the one who alerted us to the situation and let us get Adam safely back into the car before the other demon pinned us. Meg, the demon in charge rather than the one that was in Bobby…we've tangled with her before, knocked Sam out then took the demon-killing knife off me…"

"Wait…demon-killing knife? That's a thing?" Chris didn't even attempt to hide his surprise. He added 'Adam' to the note for Buck, he had to think to remember the name around his surprise, and the jovial agent moved away to see what information he had.

"Yeah. Got it off a demon, not sure of its origin but it works."

"Okay."

"Meg wanted to make Bobby experience slicing the life out of me using that knife. Bobby managed to retake control and sunk the blade into his own belly, killing the demon possessing him."

"Crap. He okay?" Chris had a sinking feeling; that didn't sound at all hopeful, and he really didn't want to have to tell Josiah his friend was dead.

"Yeah…first person I've ever seen who survived a stab from it where the demon died. He's currently in hospital. They thought for a bit that he would be paralysed, but now they're expecting him to make a full recovery."

Chris let out a carefully quiet sigh of relief before continuing, "which hospital?"

"Sioux Falls General."

Chris scrawled that down along with Bobby's name and pointed Josiah at it. The profiler moved away to make his own phone call.

"Okay. So what did you want my advice with? Can't be about the angel thing since you know more than we do about that and aren't scared about putting it up invisibly anywhere going by the artistic endeavour on the walls of the guest room."

"Well…good thing I didn't get a wet dream that night then."

Chris let out a huff of laughter, thankful the oldest brother still had a sense of humour, before replying, "it's fine, we didn't touch it."

It would have been easy enough to clean it off, but he'd decided to leave it in place so that the brothers would have a sanctuary in the area if they needed it.

"We've noticed that many Hunters, Bobby included, don't seem to fortify entire houses, just certain rooms. We figured it's because that stuff isn't easy to hide, then we remembered your place and how you managed to do so pretty much invisibly."

"Ah. Yeah, that I can give advice on. Though my place I actually built, so I was able to prepare the wall cavities then fill them with salt. Doing that with an existing building isn't something that is practical. What we've done with the places the rest of the team live is hollow out decorative cornices and fill them with salt before replacing existing cornices."

He heard Dean scrawl the information down.

"Also," Chris continued, "we have a friend who made some custom door handles for us. Made out of iron with silver inlay and quenched in holy water, would you like me to ask if he could make you some?"

"That…would be amazing." Dean answered.

"How many do you need?"

"Well…there's two external doors, and also the workshop. If it's not too much trouble could I also get another two sets for Adam's place for when he returns there after his studies? We're not about to let him go back there without fixing it up. Currently, it doesn't have anything since before we met him, he didn't know anything about supernatural critters."

"Of course. So that's 5 sets. Just let me know if you need more, and I'll get some."

"Thank you."

"No problem. I'm sure you know the trick of hiding devil's traps under rugs and stuff."

"Yeah. Need to fix pretty much all of the ones Bobby has since the demons broke them though."

"Sounds like you have some work ahead of you."

"Yeah. But at least it's not putting anyone we know on a pyre, so I'm fine with that."

"Sounds like it came close." As far as Chris was concerned any hunt that didn't result in that was a good one. Civilians saved made it even better. From the other Hunter's voice, he was still having trouble accepting that it had worked out alright even with the visit to hospital.

Dean's voice went quieter, "hell…when she knocked Sam out…it looked like she'd killed him…then Bobby…never seen anyone survive a killing strike from that blade where the demon didn't also survive. Didn't manage to catch my breath again until after Bobby woke up from surgery."

"Can't have been easy. But they're both okay, and you got…what was his name…Adam back." He knew well it needed reinforcement that those that were cared about were okay at times, and that couldn't have been an easy thing to see with both a close ally and his brother appearing to be dead and only the half-brother that it sounded like he'd just met recently left as being a target of protection. That they'd both survived, one without notable injuries, was not something that sunk in quickly after that sort of experience.

Dean gave a soft chuckle that had just as much pain as relief in it, "keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. We never have things go our way, not without a struggle anyway."

"Well from the sounds of it it hasn't been particularly easy anyway, so just stop worrying on that and just take stuff as it comes."

"Trying."

"Call if you need to talk, and I'm pretty sure that goes for any of my team also."

"Thanks. Well…I'd better get measuring if we're going to make this place as impenetrable as possible. Hell…if we can figure it out we'll extend the fortifications out to the fenceline."

"Fill a big long length of pipe with salt and bury it next to the fence and gate."

Dean chuckled, "you're full of bright ideas."

"Well…when you want to protect people you care about without freaking them out you can get very inventive."

Vin squeezed his shoulder as the dark memories coloured his voice. He gave the sniper a grateful look and shook himself to throw off the memories.

"I hear you there." Dean agreed softly, Chris was grateful the Hunter didn't ask though it was a good bet he could guess at the general nature. The brothers were a rarity in that many Hunters were aware of the event that thrust them and their father into the lifestyle.

"Keep us posted, okay?" He prompted. They mightn't hunt solo, but the brothers were almost notorious for being fiercely independent. That Dean had called, even for advice rather than help, indicated that there was a degree of trust that they had for them, and the last thing he wanted to do was damage that.

"Will do." Dean agreed before ringing off.

Chris looked at the phone for a moment before putting it away and glancing at the rest of the Seven and Henriksen. Buck had returned from his search, but Josiah was still off to the side talking on his phone.

"Adam Milligan. Recorded as having been found yesterday but kidnappers not apprehended." Buck supplied, "there's also a note that his mother died a few months ago and his half-brothers brought him to Sioux Falls to live with Bobby."

"Does it have anything on how she died?" Nathan asked.

"Police report from Windom, Minnesota states that death was believed to be caused by a trained animal that dragged her into some ventilation ducts, killed her, then dragged her off. Her partially eaten body, no animal teeth marks by the way, was recovered from a crypt the perpetrators were using as their base of operations, along with the body of another missing person. The perpetrators were killed during apprehension, head's blown off after they attacked with knives."

"Eaten?" JD squeaked.

"Ghouls probably, they tend to set up in cemeteries even though they don't usually target the living." Vin suggested.

"There was a report of some unclosed corpse snatching incidents at about the same time." Buck confirmed.

"The brothers probably took care of them." Nathan noted.

"Undoubtedly." Buck agreed, "they also had an ongoing search for Adam, which was also closed yesterday. Presumably the Sioux Falls police department let them know."

"Sounds like the three of them are quite well liked there." Vin commented.

"Probably helped by them taking out the killers of a former deputy." Buck noted, "the other missing person was a retired deputy."

Josiah returned from his phone call right then.

"How is he?" Chris asked.

"Surprised and thankful." Josiah answered, "he didn't expect to survive, but he wasn't about to let that demon use his body to kill someone who he considers effectively a surrogate son."

"Didn't know they were that close…did you?" Chris asked.

Josiah shook his head, "I knew he'd been close to their dad but getting that close…explains why he's so cagy about anything to do with them. Whatever happened though…it's more than just the demons."

"How so?"

"His spine should have been severed, but from the scans the hospital did the tip of the blade didn't touch it even though it should have. Why, they don't know."

"Here's hoping that doesn't indicate a problem further down the road, Dean said he kept expecting the other shoe to drop. It would be good if that didn't happen."

Josiah nodded.

"I'd better give Ko-Je a call." Chris stated, bringing the discussion to a close since they wouldn't be able to figure out anything more, "going to send some of the door handles to Dean for Bobby's and Adam's places."

"Just don't…" Josiah started.

"Give out details about the brothers." Chris finished with a roll of his eyes, "I know. Their caution about getting people known to be connected to them is quite obvious."

Josiah held up his hand in mute apology, and the group spread out to do various different things.


	9. Chapter 9: Crisis

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 9: Crisis**

[At the same time as Chapter 82 of Pivot Point]

"Gear up." Chris interrupted the general daily work from the door to his office, "active incident, idiot has taken a sheriff as a hostage, but no one has been able to get a shot off."

"Where to?" Josiah asked as everyone collected badges and weapons.

"Sioux Falls, South Dakota."

"Sioux Falls?"

"Yup, see if your friend can get us the lay of the land, will you?"

There was a department shuttle waiting for them in the garage to run them to the airport. The team preferred their own vehicles if they could, but a 9-hour drive was a bit much for trying to bring an active incident under control.

Josiah took advantage of the ride to give Bobby a call. The careful questions he'd prepared vanishing from his mind when he heard the carefully soft answer from his friend.

"I take it I don't have to be careful about what I ask."

"Well, hello to you too, Josiah. I take it you're coming to deal with the idjit that's grabbed Sheriff Mills?"

"Yup."

"Can't convince you to turn around and go back before you enter the city limits, can I?"

"We've been assigned officially. I take it this isn't a case of just an idiot with a hostage?"

"Considering he's managing to talk at loudspeaker levels without any technology, and the few who decided to chance his wrath and made a break out of the city went up in flames… not likely. Not completely sure WHAT he is, but he ain't human."

"We were told no one has managed to get a shot off."

Bobby snorted, "more like he got shot half a dozen times by various police officers and didn't even bleed. Incinerated a few once he got annoyed at it."

Josiah swore, drawing concerned looks from his teammates, "any chance that…"

"Sam and Dean aren't here right now, and they've got the Colt. Won't be calling them either, bastard is demanding that Sam turn himself over. Chance that it might be another Sam… but I wouldn't bet on it."

"That does narrow the possibilities down."

"Yeah, and neither can be killed easily. Hell… don't even know if it's possible to kill angels."

"You tried…"

"Can't get close enough for either exorcism or banishing sigil."

"Damn. Well… we'll be there soon."

"Be better if you don't."

"You've never struck me as a fatalist, Bobby."

"Yeah… well… when the alternative is the apocalypse, one city is a small price to pay even if I'm one of those lives."

"Would Sam agree?"

"No. Which is why he needs to not be told about it."

Josiah sighed, then glanced up as the shuttle slowed to a stop, "I need to go, we're at the airport. We'll be there soon."

He hung up before the other Hunter could protest their coming again.

Chris waited until the shuttle had pulled out again after dropping them off, "how bad?"

"Bad. Either a demon or an angel is the hostage taker as far as he can tell, they're demanding that Sam gives himself up. Probably the Sam we know. And Bobby has resigned himself to death. Oh, and far from no shots being fired… the police peppered the guy with bullets, but it had no effect."

Various members of the team swore softly.

"If he's anything like the brothers…" Victor noted slowly.

"If anything, he's more stubborn." Josiah noted, "you don't get to be an old Hunter without it."

"Wonderful." Vin muttered before airport staff came out to usher them into their plane so they could get to the incident as quickly as possible. None of them were pleased about the potential death they were heading into, but they couldn't turn their backs on it in either of the roles.

The fear was almost palpable as they passed through the people moving aimlessly through the streets, being trapped did that to even people used to dangerous situations. Vin was sent up to a roof near the hostage situation, though none of them entertained any thought of their bullets being able to make a difference.

It was surprisingly easy to find Bobby, a teenager and woman standing surprisingly calmly with him, in the makeshift police station the ousted law enforcement officers had put together after they'd introduced themselves to the second in command of the precinct. The man had been surprisingly relieved to be able to hand over to them, undoubtedly because of the weird stuff Josiah had got the rundown on.

"Well… guess you decided to be idjits with us too." Bobby stated as he spotted Josiah, "this is Adam and Olivia."

Josiah quickly introduced the rest of the team, mentioning that Vin was on a rooftop. The radio crackled before they could discuss anything more.

"Chris." Vin spoke over the radio.

"Go ahead." Chris returned promptly.

"The hostage taker is the man we encountered at the weird bomb site, Zachariah."

The team shared a worried look.

"Understood." Chris replied.

"That's significant, how?" Bobby asked.

"The angel Sam and Dean got on the phone said he was one of the hierarchy." Josiah explained.

"Wonderful." Bobby grumbled, "at least Sam doesn't know though so he can't do anything stupid."

"Too late." Another voice interrupted, and they turned to see Dean standing behind Bobby.

"Damnit, boy, who the hell called you."

"The son of a bitch angel. Same one that ambushed us at the storage place."

"Balls. Vin said…"

"I heard."

"Where's Sam, anyway?"

Dean glanced towards where the hostage situation was, "where do you think?"


	10. Chapter 10: Arrangements

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 10: Arrangements**

"You wanted me, here I am. Now let them go." The middle brother's voice came through a microphone that had been turned on to broaden the coverage.

Sam looked calm as he watched the angelic hostage-taker. The seven and Henriksen shared worried glances, they mightn't have really seen angels in action but the stories the brother's had told them more than illustrated how big a risk was being taken.

"Nathan, with me, the rest of you stay here." Chris ordered as a small cluster of officers could be seen gathering outside the range the angel had allowed, orders shouted at Sam to come away audible. Not that the middle brother even acknowledged them.

"Now wait a minute…" Dean started, Chris held up his hand.

"Worst case, none of us can do anything. But if he pulls it off, you being there will draw attention to you two. Official attention. Especially since we, as law enforcement, shouldn't be allowing civilians anywhere near it." Chris stated, "and don't even try arguing you're not civilian, in the eyes of law enforcement you are."

Dean glared at him, but the ATF leader just looked back at him, unphased.

"No… I don't think so. Not until you're actually in here and dealt with. I need insurance against your cooperation, after all. You have my word they will be released afterwards though." Floated over the microphone from the surveillance.

The woman appearing out of thin air and tackling Sam as he started towards the door caused all of them to jump and broke the staring match. The discussion between the two was distorted given the reduced volume, and they'd tumbled further from the microphone.

"Fine." Dean finally conceded grumpily, "but you better keep him safe, outside of that son of a bitch anyway."

"Of course." Chris nodded and led Nathan out to where the small knot of police were still trying to get Sam to come away.

Sam showing her the sigils painted on his skin was unmistakable to the Hunters though.

"He's got sigils?" JD asked in surprise.

Dean nodded, "angelic combat sigils. He painted them on at a rest stop just outside the city. Never used them before, but Sam always gets that stuff down to a fine art…"

"Hope they give him enough of an edge." Olivia noted as they watched the red-haired woman push a shiny knife into Sam's hand, then jump at the pinned sheriff and disappeared into the air with her. The gasps from officers watching the feed also were audible.

"If anyone can pull it off, it's Sam." Bobby stated as they watched Sam pick himself up and walk back to the door.

"You won't be able to get all of them rescued like that." The man who'd been identified as Zachariah stated clearly as Sam came back into his view, "the next person you try to have spirited away will have their heart explode. And I will get your little angel ally eventually, and she will rue the day she first contemplated rebellion."

Ezra made a quick note in a notebook he'd pulled out of his pocket.

"Didn't expect anything else." Came the stiff reply.

"Let's get this over with. Come in here."

The shouts from the officers became more frantic as Sam calmly walked over to the door and entered.

"Well… finally. I believe it is one of your human sayings 'if you want something done right, do it yourself.'" Zachariah stated, satisfaction almost oozing from his words. It was harder to hear since they weren't communicating at volume anymore, and JD increased what he could to compensate. The officers had stopped shouting once Sam had gone through the door, they probably wouldn't have been able to make out what was being said if they'd continued.

"That is one of our sayings, yes. And we put a lot of stock in it also." Sam replied, then suddenly he had the knife that he'd been given slid in between Zachariah's ribs. The move was clearly well taught to the trained eyes of the agents.

A blaze of blinding light burst from the hostage taker's eyes, mouth, and wound, only dying down once he flopped bonelessly onto the floor. Black smudges could be seen bracketing the body.

The knot of officers surged forward, only to make way for the two agents at a command from Chris. JD switched off the microphone as the noise from so many people overwhelmed the input.

"Do all angels have weapons of that calibre?" Ezra asked.

"They all appear to have those knives if that's what you're asking." Dean replied, "had no idea they could do that, though."

"I see." Ezra replied thoughtfully before slipping away.

Chris and Nathan hadn't even needed to glance at each other to know what they needed to do. The officers making way for them at Chris' terse command, not precisely the most gracefully but neither of them were bothered by that. They knew they needed to shield the young Hunter, and emotional police weren't exactly the easiest to deal with.

Sam looked somewhat shaken when they got to him.

"Chris? Nathan?" He asked, surprise apparent in his voice.

"You okay?" Chris asked. He was reassured when Sam nodded, the young Hunter was evidently resilient. He held out his hand, "I'm going to need to ask for the knife."

"It's…" Sam started to protest, and it didn't take much to know what he was going to say.

"I know." Chris interrupted, hoping the general cacophony would cover his next words if the microphone were still working, "and we'll figure something out, but for now, it needs to appear to be in our custody."

Sam handed it over without further protest, he'd obviously followed the unspoken reasoning flawlessly.

The evident strength of the other Hunter aside, Chris didn't like how more colour was draining from Sam's face and he squeezed his shoulder reassuringly, "sit down and let Nathan have a look at you."

Instead of following the suggestion, Sam looked around as if searching for someone he expected to be there, and it didn't take a genius-level intellect to figure out who he was missing.

"Dean's with the rest of my team. Wasn't easy to get him to take a back seat. We should be able to keep official attention off you playing it this way though."

Sam nodded and let Nathan guide him into a seat.

Chris left them to it, instead turning to keep an eye on the organised chaos the members of the police department were engaging in as they reclaimed their building. It was going to be complicated to explain what had happened, especially with the supernatural events actually caught on camera, and the various things said. It might end up as a blot on their record of explaining the weird, but likely few would really want to dig further. He saw Ezra slip unobtrusively in, give him his customary two-finger salute, then go over to the sprawled body of the angel. The officers paid him no mind.

He was just wondering how they were going to unobtrusively get in contact with Anna to let her know she could bring the sheriff back when said sheriff came in shadowed by the angel. Sheriff Mills was almost instantly swarmed by her officers all trying to make sure she was okay, and Chris took advantage of the confusion to get Anna's attention and discretely shepherd her into a nearby room.

"What is it, Chris?" The angel asked, "I need to get to Sam before…"

"I've got the knife, it needed to appear to be in custody. You've got no idea the kafuffle it would cause if it just vanished." Chris interrupted.

"It's called an angel blade, and actually I would, I lived as a human for many years before reclaiming my grace. So what's your plan? It'd be just as much of a shit storm if it vanished from custody, if not more."

"After what we saw it do, there's no way I'd want it to stay in evidence. But something needs to be there, preferably something that explains the light show."

Anna nodded thoughtfully, "I think I can do that."

She picked up a drink can that had been abandoned in the room when Zachariah had taken over, and a moment later it was transformed into a blood-free copy of the blade Sam had turned over to him. She showed Chris the cap on the end and the batteries residing there.

"Not a perfect explanation, but there's only so much space to work with. There's even a layer of rubber to give an explanation to why Sam wasn't affected."

Chris nodded, there wasn't going to be many who'd dig into it though. Most would be happy enough with an explanation that didn't involve supernatural powers.

"Good. Now how to swap them out."

"I could do a direct swap, even leaving the blood in place so it will be on the copy." Anna suggested.

"Perfect."

The only visible evidence of the change was the nearly invisible seam on the copy was now on the one in the evidence bag.

"Great." Chris stated as he put the bag away again, "now if only the rest of the events are as easy to explain."

Anna gave a rueful chuckle and shook her head, "good luck with that. I wasn't even thinking of that when I got Sheriff Mills out of there, or I'd have included a puff of smoke or something."

"No matter, we'll figure something out."

"Let me know if you need anything put in place that you can lay at Zachariah's feet."

"Will do. Now we'd better walk out of here and not do any more unexplainable things."

Anna nodded and followed Chris out of the room. Both Ezra and Sam were gone when they emerged, Nathan letting them know they'd gone to the former command post.


	11. Chapter 11: Scenes

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

.

 **Chapter 11: Scenes**

It was quiet as the two of them gazed over the dark scrapyard, the younger Hunters and various guests had taken themselves off to bed, and now it was just the two of them enjoying a beer, company, and the rare quiet of the night.

"How bad, Bobby?" Ellen asked, finally breaking the silence.

"I'm guessing you're not talking about the angel taking the city hostage thing."

"Of course not, I can see the fallout of that with my own two eyes. The thing with Sam that sent him to the Shaman."

"How they met him or when they went to him for help?"

"Bobby!" Ellen glared at him.

Bobby shrugged, he knew what she was asking about true enough, but the brothers weren't the only people who practised avoidance. There was a reason he was known as the town drunk after all.

"He damn near died on my kitchen floor. If he hadn't figured out what was going on…" He shook his head, "what matters is he did, and they found help."

"Did the shaman fix the underlying issue or just the stuff with his abilities?"

Bobby looked at her trying to place the tone in her voice.

"I have seen a lot of Hunters over the years, Bobby, and I don't want either of those boys to eat a bullet." Ellen continued.

"He's a real Shaman, Ellen, not a fly-by-nighter."

"And we know that how?"

"Because I knew him, long before the boys stumbled on his reservation and saved his arse."

"And why would a real shaman need saving?"

"Because even real shamans can come up against things too powerful for them. Rogue dreamwalker, more experienced than Shaman and thus more powerful. At least where the trained ones are concerned. Sam's a natural dreamwalker, booted the rogue out of his mind when they tried the same trick with him. Of course, Sam wasn't too happy about the consequences of that, booting someone out of his or someone else's head kills them. He always second-guesses himself when a human is involved even when they have powers. Or even a creature who can actually choose whether to kill or not. And once the rogue was dead, he helped save those that had been trapped in their dreams." Bobby glanced at Ellen, "the boys didn't mention it, but Shaman was quick to admit to me that he wouldn't have had the strength to retrieve any but the most recent victims. And given how strong he is, that's saying something."

"I see." Ellen took another drink of her beer and returned her gaze to the darkened scrapyard.

Writing up the report once they were back in Denver was both rather simple and more complicated than it should be. And as much as they would have preferred to stay longer in Sioux Falls, they also understood AD Travis' reasoning behind getting them to leave it to the locals to finish up. There was a lot of unexplainable things that happened during the incident, stuff even they weren't able to fully explain away.

Chris had dealt with the issue of attaching one of the carvings that Sam had given them at work by putting it up as a personal piece of art in his office. And the rest had opted for attaching them at their homes also, except for at Chris' ranch where they'd set it up like Bobby's and stashed an extra 4 in the guest room in case they were needed.

The brass wasn't particularly happy with the repeated "more evidence needed to form a hypothesis as to how the man who identified himself as 'Zachariah' was able to do" followed by one of the fantastical things he'd done. They were even less happy about the Sioux Falls office not being able to produce that physical evidence. But even they had to accept that no evidence means no evidence. The team didn't even have to intervene to help anyone falsely suspected of being involved. A benefit of the increasingly ever-present cameras. And things gradually settled down into what roughly passed as normal for them.

"Sheriff Mills?"

Jody looked up at the woman poking her head out of the door into the waiting room where she was sitting.

"That's me." She got up, returning the out of date magazine to the stack as she did so.

"I was wondering if I'd see anyone from the department after what happened." The lady said as she closed the door behind them, "Lesley Fitzpatrick, as I'm sure you've guessed."

"Well, I was quite relieved to find that you already worked with the department after Bobby gave me your name."

"Bobby… the Hunter?" Lesley asked.

Jody nodded, "with the… weirdness… I didn't want to send my people to just anyone."

"So it was what it looked like."

"Unfortunately."

"Did they confirm what it was…?"

"Sam, the Hunter who took it out, said it was an angel. The forensics department is still having kittens about the wing scorch marks, and the autopsy that didn't turn up any trace of modern influences or even an identity, but at least they managed to give an explanation of the light show."

"The batteries in the handle that the press conference spoke about?" She continued when Jody nodded, "that puzzled me. I'm not an expert, but would the number of batteries able to be squeezed in there actually be able to produce that much electricity?"

Jody shook her head with a wry smile, "a different angel, the one that rescued me from the footage, managed to swap it out. What matters is that there's an explanation that won't leave the city panicking."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"Yes and no. There's a reason Hunters exist, there's a reason some law enforcement are also Hunters. There's also a reason the supernatural isn't common knowledge. If law enforcement and the justice system could deal with those things, I'm pretty sure many Hunters would sign up in a heartbeat." Jody replied, "could you imagine the nightmare if it was known possession was a real thing? How many criminals would claim it just to get off the charges? A decent number try it anyway. I'm not even sure if Hunters can prove past possessions other than having seen or performed the exorcisms themselves."

"Not to mention most victims don't actually survive being possessed, and how would the justice system feel about that? The victims are innocent, but most of the wounds would likely be caused by people just trying to defend themselves, or by Hunters trying to contain the demon. Should those people then be charged with murder? Or negligent homicide?"

Jody shook her head, "no. That wouldn't be justice. But that's an all too real possibility for trying to integrate it into the justice system, law enforcement would be the first to admit that it has its flaws."

"Many things involving humans do." Lesley replied with a sad smile, "so many in my profession would see any sort of weirdness in experiences as evidence of delusion. I know I did before a Hunter saved my arse from a ghost I'd been trying to convince a patient didn't exist."

"From what I gather, that's generally what happens. I know I thought of Bobby as a weird but ultimately harmless drunk that told weird arse stories, though I did know he knew a lot of weird stuff that people believe… legends and stuff… until that bastard angel bashed his way into my house, killed my husband, and grabbed me to string up like a pinata I had no idea it was actually real."

"That can't have been easy."

"I figured I was dead. No way my officers would allow someone to give themselves up in the probably futile hope of saving me or the city, you don't negotiate with those types of criminals, insanely powerful or not. How Sam got past them, I don't know, but I thought he was one of the biggest idiots in the world when he appeared to turn himself over."

"And now?"

"It's still one of the most foolish things I've ever seen, also one of the bravest. Which I think is a description of Hunters in general."

Lesley chuckled, "true. I've never known a more brave or foolhardy group of people. At least someone is pushing those looking to be Hunters into getting therapy first."

"That's good, weapons and trauma don't mix very well."

The rest of the team barely glanced at the agent that walked straight through their bullpen to Chris' door. A few minutes later, Chris appeared in the doorway.

"Vin? Could you join us?"

The rest of the team shared a few questioning glances, then Vin locked his computer and followed the request.

"What's going on?" Vin asked once he'd closed the office door. Generally, if it was a case, the team would have been called into the conference room, not a single agent into Chris' office.

"Vin, this is Agent Martinez. He's here because they've had an unusual development in one of their cases." Chris told him, something unreadable in his voice.

The agent handed over a picture of a rest stop table and benches, a large splash of what looked like blood over one of the seats and on the ground.

Vin looked at him in confusion.

"We're actually not sure if it is connected to the cases we are investigating." He explained, "but when we found that we had to do some checking, someone throws up that much blood, they're in trouble. But there were no hospital admissions or morgue intakes."

Vin did a double-take at the photo, "that's puke?"

He nodded, "because whoever that was from apparently vanished, we had to assume they needed assistance, and were either incapable of getting it themselves or prevented. We ran the blood through the national database. Didn't turn up an exact match, but we did get a cousin match. Second cousin to be exact."

"Still not following why you wanted to talk to me."

"Vin." Chris interrupted softly, "the match was to you."

"Me?!" Vin returned incredulously, feeling rather like he'd been punched in the gut, "my dad died before I was born, my mum when I was 5. I went into the system. Far as I know, I HAVE no family, not by blood anyway."

"I know this might be difficult…" the agent began.

"Difficult? Way to understate it. Find out that I might actually have a blood relative out there, who was unable to be found when my mum died might I add, and not only do I not have a clue who it is, they're in trouble. Really sick, possibly being kept prisoner. And that's only if they're not dead."

"We're still looking. I came here to see if you knew who it might be, to let you know of the situation if you didn't. My apologies if the situation has hurt you."

"Thank you for letting us know." Chris stated, "let us know if you turn up anything."

"Chris…" Vin started.

"We'll also do some digging on our end, see if we can turn up anything from what's known of Vin's family." Chris continued, knowing instinctively what the sniper was going to say.

Agent Martinez nodded, then showed himself out. Vin slumped into the chair.

"You okay?" Chris asked.

Vin snorted, "would you be?"

"No. And I actually have some idea of my family tree."

"Where do I even start looking?"

"Your record with child services probably, see what they found about your mum after she died."

"They don't have much, couldn't even figure out what her maiden name was. Or even if she took dad's name, only reason we even know her name was Elizabeth was she made sure 5 years old me knew it."

"That's odd… most parents wouldn't do that, even if they've lost the other parent… unless it was violently. Do you know how your dad died?"

Vin shook his head.

"Okay. Let's get the rest of the team on it unless you'd rather not."

"JD and Ezra will probably get more than the investigators back then in the first 5 minutes."

"Okay." Chris led the way out of the office, calling the team into the conference room to explain the situation.


	12. Chapter 12: Unexpected Result

Pivot Point

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **Chapter 12: Unexpected Result**

Vin paced in his living room. The search hadn't turned up any leads, and he was pretty sure the only reason it hadn't been put on the back burner was because of the link, however tenuous, to a law enforcement officer. His phone caught his eye again, and he again thought of the other aspect of his life. The men and women who roamed pretty much everywhere, knew places to look that many law enforcement didn't, and were incredibly observant.

"Fuck it." He grumbled, then grabbed his phone before he could double guess himself.

"Hello?" Dean answered after a few rings.

"Hi… uh… sorry… probably shouldn't be bothering you…"

"Vin? What's wrong? You need Sam and me to jump in the car?"

"No… no… nothing like that. There's… it's not even our case… but… thought maybe you could keep an eye out."

"Okay, what's the details?"

"Okay… first I knew was this agent came to the office. In the course of an investigation, they came across something that made them think someone was in trouble, health-wise, possibly even physically. They don't think it's related to their case… when they ran the blood they found… they got a cousin match… to me."

"Damn… that's gotta be a gut punch. Any idea who?"

"No. Before that moment I didn't think I HAD any blood relatives. And I find out that they're at the very least very sick, probably even dead… someone throws up that much blood at a rest stop… they're not likely to be alive much longer."

"Threw up blood? At a rest stop?"

"Yeah… off highway 57 in Illinois." Vin answered, wondering why Dean had focused on that. Sure, most Hunters had better medical skills than a regular civilian. Still, a good portion of that was knowing how to keep someone alive long enough to get them to a hospital and recognising when a hospital was necessary. He had no illusions about the severity of whatever injury or illness his unknown cousin had after Nathan's serious talk with him about possible causes. And the likelihood of surviving even long enough to reach a hospital let alone the amount of time it had now been.

He could almost hear the frown in the other Hunter's voice, "Vin… what was your mother's name?"

"Elizabeth, no idea on her maiden name or if she even took my dad's though. She died when I was 5." He couldn't figure out how they'd got to that topic from what they'd been discussing.

"Was it… on 26 July 1986, Onslow, Texas?" The hesitation was audible in Dean's voice.

"Yeah…" Vin answered slowly, almost wanting to tell him to forget it. The last thing he wanted to know was that his mother had been, or became, a creature that was killed by a Hunter. Probably by their dad given his knowing the date so readily. And that didn't bode well.

"Vin… we had no idea she'd had a kid…" He could hear the apology in his voice, though apology for what he didn't know. And didn't want to speculate about.

"You would have only been… what… 6 at the time…"

"7 actually. But we've got the family tree… her maiden name was Campbell."

Vin blinked, "as in…"

"Our mum's family, yeah. Her father was our mother's uncle, brother of her father."

"And you made that connection…?"

"Because watching my brother puke up a quart of blood is kinda seared into my brain. If I hadn't had the phone number for Anna, I don't know what I would have done."

"What happened?"

"Angel gave him some kinda illness, I didn't ask the details and honestly didn't want to know after Anna healed him."

"Okay, that would explain the no hospital admissions or morgue intakes."

"Closest hospital was a couple of hours away anyway, there was no way we'd have got there in time if they could have even done anything to help."

Vin shook his head, almost unable to absorb the unexpected direction the conversation had taken.

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah… bit off-kilter though… didn't think I'd ever find family… was bracing for finding out they were dead… not even JD was able to turn up any information as to mum's family."

"The Campbells were a Hunter family, they knew how to hide their paper trail. Wouldn't be surprised if the only thing you really find on them are their birth certificates, probably marriage certificates, and the occasional death certificate. Think there's a couple of distant cousins still alive out there, but only because they didn't have even glancing contact with our mum. Old yellow eyes pretty much killed everyone who even knew mum, to isolate her, we think."

"Even if it's just you two… that's still more than I thought I had…" Vin hesitated, "Dean… what killed her?"

"Demon. Either yellow eyes or on his orders." Dean replied, "if it helps, he's dead. Shot him with the colt 3 years ago."

"Not really… but it's good to know for sure."

"Look… we'll head that way in the morning. If it's not urgent, it would be better to drive refreshed, unless you need us there asap."

"Definitely not urgent, but you don't need to come."

"Probably, but we'd like to. Finding family doesn't happen every day, and we can bring what we know of the family. Only a 10-hour drive anyway."

Vin chuckled slightly, only a Hunter could be that off-hand about the distance involved, "that would be good. Text you where to meet tomorrow?"

"Sounds good. See you then."

He hung up the phone and stared at it, incredulous for a moment. He'd counted the brothers as allies, friends even, after they'd saved his life. To find out they were family, even a relatively distant family, and find out why there was such an echoing emptiness where some blood relative should exist at the same time was... astounding. Sure, he wasn't getting a massive extended family, and they were being hunted by some of the most powerful beings in existence, but they were family. And family when he'd given up on ever finding some before he was a teen.

Vin frowned as it clicked that the timing of the psileech latching onto him couldn't have been a coincidence, he was probably lucky the angel hadn't killed him outright. And none of the team would have had a clue as to why. He'd bet Sam wouldn't take long to make that connection either, and blame himself if he knew the middle brother half as well as he thought he did. Maybe by the time they got here, he'd have thought of something to say to reinforce that it wasn't his fault.

For a moment he contemplated calling Chris and letting him know the development, then decided the next day at work would be better. No urgency about it to disrupt the team leader's sleep.

He didn't really expect to get to sleep particularly quickly and was, sleepily, surprised to find himself dropping off within minutes.

The next day Vin waited until after Chris arrived and had enough time to get a coffee and settle for the day before he knocked on the door.

"Can I talk to you?" He asked when Chris looked up at him. The blond waved him to a seat, and Vin entered, closing the door behind him.

Chris raised an eyebrow, then picked up the bug sweeper and showed it to him, silently asked if it was needed. Vin nodded. The blond did a sweep quickly, it didn't turn up anything. Wasn't surprising, the office was swept regularly, but always paid to make sure.

"What's up?"

"I gave Dean a call about the cousin situation last night."

Chris nodded, "that makes sense, the investigation is going nowhere fast, and Hunters go everywhere, and if they spot anything they tend to intervene. Did he say anything?"

"Yeah… he was there. Sam was the one who puked up the blood."

Chris froze for a moment before forcing himself to breathe and reason through it, "we saw both of them not long ago, Sam wasn't sick at all."

"Dean called that angel, Anna, she saved him. Said it was from a run-in with another angel, he didn't get the details on precisely what was done to Sam."

"Sounds like him, that would have been far too close for his comfort." Chris noted, "you sure that it was the same rest stop, though? Don't want to rain on your parade, just there could be mistakes made."

"They had mum's death recorded in their family tree. They never knew she'd had a kid."

"They would have been kids themselves at the time."

"Got the impression they would have tracked me down long ago if they'd known. And… don't know much about John, but I really doubt he'd have left the child of one of his wife's family, no matter how distant, just hanging if he knew. He mightn't have been father of the year, but he wasn't the worst either."

John Winchester had been legendary, both for his Hunting and for how he'd trained his sons. Not everyone had agreed or got along with the former marine, particularly over how he taught the boys, but no one said he didn't love them. And given what the Seven now knew about the attention some of the more powerful factions in the supernatural world heaped on them, it was quite possibly the only reason they were even still alive.

And damn near anything would have been better than the childhood Vin had had after his mother's death.

"Anyway, Dean said they'd head this way today. Bring what they know of the family with them."

"Okay, meet up at my ranch? Do you want the others to be there also?"

Vin hesitated for a moment, then nodded, "yeah, they've been looking too. And… they mightn't be blood, but they're family too."

"Okay, I'll let them know. You need a break?"

"No, I'll be fine. Was bracing for finding out whoever it was, was dead in a ditch after failing to make it to help. Then find out they're not just alive and healthy, but they're not the only one. It's a shock… but a pleasant one."

"Okay." Chris nodded, and Vin left the office.

5


	13. Chapter 13: Family

Pivot Point

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **Chapter 13: Family**

"What's going on, Chris?" Buck asked once they were all at the team leader's ranch, and beers had been handed out.

Chris glanced at Vin, who cleared his throat.

"I… uh… called Dean last night about the cousin situation." The sniper started.

"That explains why Chris told us to shelve it." JD commented, "I take it one of them was able to help."

Vin nodded, "Dean was there."

"So, he was able to tell you who it was?" Nathan asked, "was he able to give you the hospital they're in, assuming they're still alive."

The medic didn't especially hold much hope along those lines, Vin was there after all. If there'd been the slimmest chance of being able to say goodbye to the mysterious cousin, he'd have been given time off in a split second, and Ezra undoubtedly would have worked his magic to get him a plane ticket if it was needed.

"Yeah. And before you continue along that line of thought, he got that angel that rescued Sheriff Mills on the line, and she teleported there and saved Sam."

The rest of the team froze, some with beers halfway to the mouths.

"Sam?" Josiah asked, "the brothers are your cousins?"

Vin nodded, "they have the record of mum's death in their family tree, just had never had reason to compare it to my records. On their mum's side."

"Holy crap…" JD mumbled, and from the strained smiles that cracked various faces, he was only voicing what the rest were thinking.

The distinctive rumble of the impala interrupted the conversation.

"Dean said they'd head here today, bring what they knew of the family with them." Vin explained quickly as Chris headed towards the door, "I don't know how the telling of Sam went, though."

"Surely he wouldn't be upset about finding out you're family." JD asked incredulously.

"JD, their entire family was hunted down and killed. Unless I miss my guess that's why they didn't know about him before now, he was kept secret." Josiah replied quietly, saving Vin from doing so, "Sam would be upset that Vin might be in danger because of that. And remember what Anna said when she told all of us about the hierarchy, that side of the family might be killed if an angel encountered them."

Chris let the two brothers in with a soft clatter, forestalling further conversation. Dean had a battered journal in his hands. Sam crossed the distance between him and Vin in just a couple of long strides to pull him into a firm hug. He was easily a head taller than the sniper.

"Sorry." The middle brother all but whispered.

"Not your fault." Vin replied, continuing when Sam gave a disbelieving huff of laughter, "I mean it. None of it is your fault, not the demon killing our family, not the psileech, none of it."

Sam pulled back, "but…"

"I mean it." Vin told him, "now come on, join us as now known family."

Buck handed the brothers a couple of beers as Vin led them over, Dean giving the sniper a clap on the shoulder as he did so.

It wasn't until Dean opened the journal a while later, once everyone had relaxed, that it became glaringly apparent just how extensively the family had been all but annihilated. The family tree was neatly documented, right down to the neat writing recording the cause of death, date, and location. It took Vin a moment to place it as Dean's handwriting, he couldn't imagine having to do the research that indicated. There was a separate piece of paper with it, also in Dean's handwriting. He frowned once he picked it up and looked over it, with few exceptions all the dates of death on this list were in the same year.

"All our mum's friends." Dean answered his unspoken question, "anyone who ever knew her. From the doctor who delivered her, to her school teachers, to the priest who married her and dad."

One of the team swore softly.

"She can't have taken that lying down…" Vin said softly.

"She was a Hunter, even if she wanted out of that life, I doubt she did." Dean replied, "we're reasonably sure she was able to get a warning out to her family at least, after the first burst, it took a lot longer for them to kill the rest."

"Elizabeth was the last." Sam continued, "dropped even further off the grid than Hunters usually are and ran. Stayed ahead of them a good 10 years from what we could tell, she must have met your dad during that time."

"She wasn't the last." Dean corrected sadly, "Jess was the last."

"Jess wasn't…" Sam started, quickly suppressed pain flitting across his face.

"She would have been family if that bastard hadn't killed her, I wasn't blind enough to miss that." Dean refuted gently.

"Yeah… she was dead the moment she fell in love with me." Sam retorted caustically, before closing his eyes briefly and taking a controlled breath. Then headed out the back door to the veranda after excusing himself softly.

Dean swore at himself quietly, shot an apologetic glance at the team, before starting for the door to follow his brother. Chris intercepted him.

"Let me."

"But…"

"I know what it's like to have a loved one torn from you violently. I'm guessing that's what happened with Jess?"

"Yellow-eyed bastard pinned her to the ceiling and set her on fire on the anniversary of our mother's death in the same manner."

"Damn. Okay, we'll be back soon. I know you didn't mean that to hurt and I'm betting he knows that too."

"Chris… he blames himself… he never seems to actually have it sink in that he was another victim of that bastard, that what they did wasn't his fault. I should…"

"More people saying the same thing will reinforce it." Chris stated, he glanced at Josiah before heading to the door.

The big profiler's hand landed gently on Dean's shoulder before he could start to follow.

"I'm an idiot." The eldest brother mumbled.

"You didn't know. You wanted to acknowledge her as family even if it hadn't been official. You can't have known he blamed himself for it." Josiah rumbled.

Dean snorted, "yeah, I did. I shouldn't have pushed it."

"Looks like blaming themselves for something they're not responsible for isn't confined to Sam." Buck pointed out gently.

Dean just shrugged.

Sam hadn't gone far, was just leaning on the railing watching the horses that were out in the paddock.

"Sam?" Chris asked softly, the glance he got from the middle brother was part amused question part resignation.

"I'm okay, just need a moment to gather my thoughts. Dean send you out?"

"I overrode him. I know what it's like to have a loved one torn from your life violently."

Sam gave a half laugh that had very little amusement in it, "that's one way of describing seeing the love of your life burnt to death in front of your eyes."

"That would have been horrible. At least I didn't see it with mine."

"What happened?" Sam asked softly.

The more Chris learned about what the brothers had been through, the more amazed he got at the compassion they, and in particular, Sam, didn't hesitate to display.

"Appeared to be a car bomb, though they couldn't find any components of it. Then the team and I found out that it was a witch with an obsession about me. Had a nutty idea that with them out of the way I'd realise I was madly in love with her."

"Crazy isn't confined to regular humans."

"That's for sure. Had some bad days where I'd think I should have seen it, should have been able to protect them. Then would drink myself stupid until someone poured me into bed."

"Definitely know that feeling. But… a lot of alcohol and telekinesis doesn't really mix well. Of course… feeling crap about yourself and telekinesis doesn't mix well either."

"What happened?"

"It backfired on me, nearly killed me." Sam shrugged, "Dean found a solution, wasn't easy, but it worked."

"Self-destruction is a hard habit to break."

"True."

"Combination of Josiah and Buck for me. All but sat on me to stop me drinking myself stupid and made me talk. Unconventional for sure, but the team isn't the most conventional at the best of times. Kept it from ending up on my record and getting the team broken up also."

Sam stayed quiet for a moment before speaking up again.

"Why don't you hate me?"

"Why would I?" Chris shot back.

"My existence puts his life in danger."

"Not your existence that does that, the blame for that falls directly on the beings that want you to be something you aren't. Bad guys target the people around their main target all the time, it's not the target's fault, it's the bad guys."

After a moment, Dean shook himself and turned back to the rest of the team. Returning to the journal he flipped to the next page and pulled out the folded piece of paper that was there, this he turned and handed to Vin.

"Here, you might want this too."

Vin opened it and froze as he took in what was recorded on it.

"Bobby had it in his records. He was a Hunter." Dean stated.

"What is it?" Buck asked.

"My dad…" Vin told him a little shakily, rereading the few lines that detailed Vincent Tanner's entrance into Hunting, and his exit.

"There might be some more out there on his side of the family…" Dean told him, "we didn't go digging yet."

"Given he was a teenager when his parents and siblings died, that's not particularly hopeful."

JD popped up from his seat and came over to look at the information, "I can see what I can turn up if you'd like?"

Vin nodded and let the youngest member of the team take the slip of paper.

"Didn't mean to cause pain." Dean commented softly.

"You didn't." Vin told him, "just… wasn't expecting to get information on him also. We hadn't been able to track him back from my birth certificate… probably should have twigged then that it was a deliberate attempt to hide me."

"Doesn't detail the information of exactly what you were being hidden from. Can just as easily be extrapolated that they were seeking to hide your connection to your parents from the authorities." Ezra put in, "which could happen for any number of reasons, not all of which are nefarious."

"Let me guess… you DID spot that." Buck commented.

"And without further information, it was impossible to speculate as to the reasons. Indeed, some people are so bad at spelling that it may have occurred purely by accident. Though with the information we had available regarding the cousin before the happy discovery of the connection to the brothers Winchester I was inclined towards thinking that Mr Tanner's parents had escaped imprisonment at the hands of criminals. Which would handily explain the duality of hiding him yet registering his birth."

Ezra noticed Dean relax a minuscule amount and raised an eyebrow at him in question.

"I'm glad you think finding the connection to us is a good thing." The eldest brother told him.

"You were worried we wouldn't?" Josiah asked.

"Well… leaving aside that we're not exactly anyone's first choice for long lost family…"

"No one bothered to ask me then." Vin put in.

Dean hesitated for a moment before continuing, "some of the most powerful beings in existence are hunting us, they've already killed most of the family. And even if you didn't blame us for it, I certainly wouldn't have been surprised if you'd decided you wanted nothing to do with us."

Vin moved forward to stand in front of the older brother and glared up at him, "one, it's not your fault. Neither of you. Two, running and hiding wouldn't stop them if they knew about me anyway. And three, with you, is the best chance of survival. And that's without even touching on the fact that you're family. I don't have many. Until that agent showed up at the office, the entirety of my family were those I'd chosen. Getting actual blood family, and them already being folks I count as friends, is not something I would discard. No matter who is fucking with them."

Dean bit his lip for a moment, then pulled the slim sniper in for a rough hug, "think you could repeat that when Sam gets back in here? First thing he jumped to when I told him was how the psileech had to have been set deliberately by Zachariah, and that the only reason either of you were there to cross paths was because he'd used that Enochian exorcism on Lilith."

"As often as the two of you need." Vin replied, before pulling back from the hug and patting his arm.

The eldest brother managed a slight chuckle, "and I'm not the one the fucking demons keep outright telling that they're the reason they're doing the crap they are. At least the damn angels don't do that, just get annoyed we're not falling in line with their carefully ordered plans."

"Can't be easy, especially for a good man like Sam." Josiah rumbled.

Dean winced a little, "no… it isn't."

Vin and Josiah shared a brief look, wondering if it would be a good idea to try to find out what caused the flinch, before deciding simultaneously that it was a landmine best left alone for now.

Sam came back in with Chris a short while later, and by unspoken consensus between Team Seven, they switched to more lighthearted conversation topics.

7


	14. Chapter 14: Unravelling Mysteries

Pivot Point

Story Name: Tales from Pivot Point

Pen Name: ElenaRoan

Disclaimer: Don't own any of them, written purely for enjoyment.

Warnings:

Summary: Various people the boys have come across in their lives

Timeline: Begins season 4 of Supernatural

Note: This is also a crossover, though it is only dependent on Pivot Point. Credit to MOG for the AU being used for the crossover.

 **Chapter 14: Unravelling Mysteries**

"Conference room." Chris called as he came through the door to their area, manila folders in his hands.

"New case." Victor more commented than asked as he locked his computer and stood up. There'd been no further hints at transferring him away after the end of that first case, though he was somewhat hesitant to ask. There was that saying about gift horses for a reason. Maybe the FBI brass had learnt that you didn't try messing with someone Team Seven had at least befriended.

"Looks like." Buck agreed.

"Nothing in the news feeds." JD stated, which meant it was so new it hadn't even hit the information briefs yet. Which further indicated it had been immediately assigned to them, whatever that signified.

They collected a folder each as they filed into the conference room and sat down. Basic information and the location was recorded inside, along with several photos of an apparent bomb blast. A very gory bomb blast.

"What, did they stick it up some poor guy's butt?" JD asked.

"That is one of the theories." Chris told him blandly.

Nathan flipped through the information they'd received, "forensics isn't done with the analysis yet?"

"They think someone messed up or the lab is compromised. Initial forensic tests didn't return any positive results for explosive residue."

"Joy." Buck grumbled. They'd have to assume they couldn't rely on the locals, however unfair that might be to them.

"Any leads on who the poor bastard is?" Josiah asked.

"Still running the DNA, but unless they're in the database, we're not going to find out who they were."

"Not without a serious forensics jigsaw puzzle anyway." Vin added. If the pictures were anything to go by, not even the smallest bone had been left intact of whoever it had been.

"Maybe not even then, if the forensics lab really is compromised." Ezra put in.

Arriving at the site was almost anticlimactic after the photos, not that they could go into the scene to have a look around since their forensic team was going over it with a fine-tooth comb.

"Why no scorch marks?" Victor asked thoughtfully, "thought it was an artifact of the photos, but there's no evidence of them even where there isn't blood."

"Maybe from how it was detonated, or the explosive used." Josiah replied.

"Maybe there's no residue because there wasn't an actual explosive used?"

"That's an idea. Didn't see any equipment that might have been able to pull that off, but we can look once forensics have finished if they don't find anything."

The interviews didn't turn up much information, unsurprisingly no one had actually seen what led up to the explosion. Though there were a couple of descriptions of a brilliant white light coming from the building, several separate accounts of it.

They actually got the DNA results from the ATF lab the next day since it had been put at high priority by the brass. Understandably so, the number of cases that could be jeopardised if the local forensics lab was compromised was uncountable.

"Missing person report from July last year." JD announced after checking on the result, they'd actually been surprised to get a hit.

"So how does Jimmy Novak go from vanishing from his family home to having an explosion detonate inside him?" Buck asked aloud after reading the report.

"With no explosive residue no less." Nathan added, looking up from the report they'd received shortly after the DNA results.

"Our lab backed that finding up?" Victor asked, surprised.

"Ran it multiple times to make sure, with different techs each time. Didn't find anything recognisable as residue from an explosive. If the local lab returns the same DNA results, I think they can be cleared."

"Then what caused that… explosion for want of a better word? Josiah and I looked for any equipment that might have been able to do that. Didn't even find a void indicating something had been removed afterwards."

"They say they're continuing to run analyses looking for more unusual compounds that might indicate an unusual explosive used. Surprised they didn't find magnesium or something given the description of that light that was seen."

"I'm assuming they tested for that?"

"Definitely after that description."

"Then what the hell caused it?" Victor mused.

"Excellent question." Nathan agreed.

"Vic, Josiah, go talk to the widow." Chris ordered once he'd looked over the reports.

Victor almost winced in anticipation of the several hours' drive that wasn't even in one of their vehicles since those were back in Denver. He was pleasantly surprised to find out that Chris had badgered someone in accounting into forking out for a couple of plane tickets to the closest airport and a new rental car.

Not that it produced convenient results since when they reached the listed address of the wife who had reported the late Jimmy Novak missing they found that it had been closed up.

"She took her daughter to her mothers a few months back." A nervous-looking woman called to them as they looked at the house frustratedly.

"Thank you, ma'am." Josiah returned, "do you happen to know where that is?"

"Um… no. Don't think so…"

"Ma'am… do you think you could tell us some more about your neighbour?"

"Um…"

"Sure." A man appeared from the house behind her, interrupting her nervousness, "I'm Roger, this is my wife, Lisa. Come on in."

Both husband and wife relaxed noticeably once the two agents passed the threshold.

"What do you want to know?" Roger asked, waving them to some couches while Lisa disappeared into the kitchen to get some coffees.

"Did you know your neighbours well?" Victor asked as he took a seat while Josiah wandered over to the window to check how much of a view of the neighbouring house they'd have.

"Well… Lisa knew them better, at least recently. I knew Jimmy pretty well until… well… he fell off the planet."

"Amelia has been a real little trooper." Lisa put in as she returned with the cups of coffee, "what with Jimmy's problems, then him disappearing."

"She only went to her mother's recently, correct? Did something change?"

"I… uh… I don't really know…" Lisa returned hesitantly.

Victor was about to pressure her on it when Josiah returned from the window.

"What happened?" The big profiler asked as he sat down and helped himself to the coffee intended for him.

"What do you mean?" Lisa asked nervously.

"I know something happened. You have a line of salt on your windowsill." Josiah replied placidly, Victor sat up straighter and gave him a surprised look, "needs to be thicker, just so you're aware. Too easy to break thin lines, that one's broken in 3 places that I saw."

"What?" She asked faintly.

"Was it ghosts or demons? And who told you how to protect yourself?" Josiah continued.

She seemed to wilt and shared a resigned look with her husband, "demons… at least that's what the guys who got them out said… was Amelia who told us how to stop it happening again though…"

"Amelia? Your neighbour Amelia, wife of Jimmy?" Victor asked, surprised.

She nodded hesitantly, "he… he went a little nuts right before he disappeared… said an angel had chosen him… she tried to get him help, medications and stuff… but he just up and vanished. Literally, if you believe Claire."

"That's the daughter, correct?"

She nodded.

"What then?"

"Then, some black smoke invaded our home and took us over several months ago." Roger elaborated, both of them shuddered, "no more than a day later this group of rugged people trapped us somehow… said a… spell or something… and it went away."

"Then a few weeks later, both Amelia and Claire disappeared for a few nights. When they came back… Amelia said Jimmy wasn't going to return. And told us about using salt to keep the black smoke out." Lisa continued, "a few months after that, she closed up the house and went to her mother's. Not sure when she's going to come back."

"And you don't know where that is? Did she leave a forwarding address with you?"

Both of them shook their heads.

"What about the names of the Hunters who rescued you?"

Again they shook their heads.

"Only name I remember hearing was 'Anna', one of them mentioned something about her helping out one of them." Lisa supplied.

Josiah noted the name down then handed them one of the team's cards, "thank you. And, I'm sure the Hunters who saved you gave you a number to call in case you needed it, but here."

A look of relief flicked across their faces as they accepted the card, "apparently we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Well, that does mean they probably won't specifically target you." Josiah replied before they took their leave.

"Wasn't this supposed to be a normal case?" Victor asked as they walked away from the house.

"With a bomb that was apparently shoved right into Jimmy's middle yet no residue could be found?" The profiler returned placidly.

Victor grimaced, "when you put it that way…"

Josiah pulled out his phone and called the team, "JD, could you get the address of the wife's mother? The wife and daughter closed the house and went there a few months ago. And tell Chris that aisle 6 needs to be looked at."

"Will do, I'll text you the info soon."

JD hung up and called over to the team leader even as he started looking up the information requested, "Chris, Josiah said aisle 6 needs to be looked at."

Chris nearly rolled his eyes and sighed, "wonderful."

The sarcasm nearly dripped off the word.

"Hey, don't blame me. The wife's gone off to her mother's so I need to find that info and send it to them." JD returned. Chris just nodded, even though the tech specialist wasn't looking at him.

"Aisle 6 would definitely explain the no explosive detonation." Vin commented softly.

"True." Chris agreed, glaring at the printout in his hand. Apparently, it was too much to ask that they get a mundane, if odd, case. Demons complicated everything. And accounting was probably going to have kittens about the two agents needing to go somewhere else also.

Josiah and Victor went to a cafe to have a coffee while they waited for the information to be sent.

"Even for demons, that's weird." Josiah commented softly once they had the coffees and had been left alone.

"What do you mean?"

"They were found and rescued by Hunters so fast, and the demons weren't interested in either killing them or ruining their lives."

"That's unusual?"

"Your only experience with demons was that time when you got jumped then saved almost immediately with that incident at the police station, correct?" Victor nodded, and Josiah continued, "that was also incredibly unusual for demons. Usually, victims are missing persons and implicated at some point in crimes, murder and the like. Unless Hunters are right there and have reason to suspect possession, it can be months, if not years, before they're discovered and exorcised. And often dead even if they haven't been connected to any crimes."

"Like my partner? Dean said he had no idea how long the demon had been riding him or how long he'd been dead."

Josiah nodded, "though maintaining a semblance of a life is unusual in and of itself. Undoubtedly because they were trying to find the brothers."

"That's a possibility I'm not going to mention to them."

"They undoubtedly already know. Speaking of the brothers… Bobby might know who the Hunters were. Won't be anything we can include in a report, but it would make things clearer if he knows." Matching actions to words, he pulled out a phone and called the other Hunter.

"Josiah?" Bobby answered.

"No problems, just a question for you." Josiah told him.

"Shoot."

"A case of ours just crossed a probable demon possession that was sorted a few months back. Obviously, nothing that can go in a report, was just wondering if you knew the Hunters involved."

"That don't narrow it down much, demon possession is pretty big as you know. Especially with that army that broke out a few years back that haven't all been dealt with."

"This one would have been odd. Real fast on the figuring out the couple was possessed and rescuing them. The only name they recall hearing was 'Anna'."

"Anna?"

"Yeah… you know her?"

"Don't know a Hunter by that name… but… don't know when she'd have been involved with… wait… Pontiac, Illinois?"

"Yeah, you know what happened?"

"Hell of a situation is what happened. Cas got hauled back to heaven, and the boys were protecting his vessel. Whole bunch of demons went after the vessel and his family, sent a Hunter squad specialising in demons in to help protect the family. Found some riding some neighbours and rescued them. One got hurt though, Hunter not neighbour. That's when Anna popped in, healed them up, and popped back out. The boys had asked her to help with keeping Castiel's promise about his vessel's family."

"So Anna's an angel, not a Hunter." Josiah more just noted aloud, they'd actually met the angel in question. Hadn't expected her to be involved though.

"Yep. What took you there?"

"Bizarre explosion. DNA sent us here, house was closed up. Neighbours gave some interesting information, and we figured out they'd been through a possession, they had lines of salt. Way too thin to help though, gave them some pointers."

"Wrong place wrong time. The demons were after their neighbour, not them."

"So the story about their neighbour saying he was chosen by an angel was true?"

A sigh echoed down the line from the old Hunter, "let me guess… Jimmy's body?"

"Only if his pureed remains can be considered a body any more. Do you know what happened?"

"An archangel happened. Anna let the boys know Cas is dead, and Jimmy's in heaven. No idea where or they'd likely have cleaned it up before it landed on your plate."

"That would be the origin of the brilliant white light then."

"Yep."

"Thanks, Bobby. Chris isn't going to be the happiest, but it is what it is."

"Good luck."

Josiah hung up, "we need a code for angels."

"Given 6 is demons, 7 would be appropriate."

"Already used for shapeshifters though."

Their phones chirped simultaneously as the information about the location of the mother's house arrived. No need for plane tickets though, since it was in the same town. It didn't take long to get to the home.

"Mrs Walker?" They showed her their badges, "may we come in?"

The elderly lady frowned at the ids, but opened the door for them and showed them into the lounge room.

"We were told your daughter moved in with you."

"Not exactly. She brought Claire here so she could go looking for Jimmy."

"I see. Do you know where she is now?"

"Claire's at school. Amelia, I don't know. She sends postcards, but we haven't received one for a while."

"I see." Josiah handed her one of the team's cards, "could you let us know her location when she contacts you next?"

"May I ask why you wish to speak with her?" She asked as she accepted the card.

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news." Josiah replied carefully after sharing a hesitant glance with Victor, "the remains of your son in law were found."

"Oh. Did you need someone to make the identification?"

"No, DNA did that for us. You don't seem very surprised."

"Well… to be honest, I'm not." The older lady replied frankly, "what with how he walked out on his family like he did. I'd thought Amelia felt the same way, she'd certainly been planning on making him earn his way back into their lives if he reappeared before a few months ago. She never told me exactly what happened, but she changed how she thought of him. And even though she'd told me that Jimmy wasn't going to be able to return, she felt she couldn't just let him disappear again. That's when she brought Claire here. I didn't agree with her going after him, but she'd made up her mind."

"I see. Thank you for your time, Mrs Walker."

"And now we wait." Victor almost grumbled as they headed back to the rental.

"That is 90% of law enforcement." Josiah agreed.

9


End file.
